


The Red and The Gold

by kore_rising



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:15:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 70,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kore_rising/pseuds/kore_rising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now in her forties with a brilliant career, a devoted husband and fantastic children, an accidental discovery leads to Ariadne finding that nothing has been as it seems. In order to try and rescue herself she has to go back twenty five years, to the people and the ideas she first encountered when she was introduced to shared dreaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** The Red and The Gold   
>  **Rating:** NC-17/M    
>  **Pairing:** Ariadne/Arthur   
>  **Warnings** :    
>  physical violence (could be construed as spousal/domestic violence in some incidences), verbal threats of sexual violence, language, descriptions of some medical proceedures, sexual content.
> 
>   
> **Summary:** Now in her forties with a brilliant career, a devoted husband and fantastic children, an accidental discovery leads to Ariadne finding that nothing has been as it seems. In order to try and rescue herself she has to go back twenty five years, to the people and the ideas she first encountered when she was introduced to shared dreaming.  
>  Notes: written for round 4 of Inception reverse bang. The (quite frankly gorgeous) art work by beautifulweddin that this fic was inspired by can be seen in below.
> 
>   
> The characters, setting and story of _Inception_ are the property of Christopher Nolan and no cash is being made from this story.

 

**Part I: The Gold**

  
_"...These our actors,_

_As I foretold you, were all spirits and_

_Are melted into air, into thin air;_

_And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,_

_The cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,_

_The solemn temples, the great globe itself,_

_Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,_

_And, like this insubstantial pageant faded..."_

_The Tempest_ (IV.1.148-55)

 

 

It was a box; a plain R-Kive box printed with fake wood grain which she must have carried from apartment to apartment to loft to storage and finally to her office, quite forgetting it existed. Now sat on her desk, edges chewed soft by age, dark with the brushed off dust and a faint watermark on the label. It had been stacked at the bottom of her office closet, under and behind her stationery supplies. One of the few perks of being the boss, she thought dryly, is that no one steals my pencils anymore. Its lid was sealed with tape and there was one word written in thick black marker across its contents list: Fischer.

Ariadne ran one cautious hand over the lid. How had it managed to resurface after all this time? She was sure they'd lost it when they moved everything to the farmhouse. She'd been angry with herself for being so careless, then aggrieved at losing one of the few anchors to her past she had kept, then gradually, over time, she had forgotten the box of mementos from her great act of rebellion. Other young women shaved their heads, got tattoos, ran off and married dance club promoters on the beaches of Ibiza— but she had been party to a crime.

Not just any crime either, but mind crime, the half denied world of extraction and shared dreams where a needle jab could mean your brain's contents were on the open market before you knew what had happened, and of that the biggest prize of all; inception. She had seen to it that a man changed his life all because of one minute crumb of thought, a mere vapour of suggestion, a pleasant lie that would succour him as he unwittingly did his rival's bidding. So when her partners in the firm had turned worried eyes on her more than a decade ago, pleading with her to train with an extractor and safeguard herself she had smilingly dismissed them. No one would get past the techniques she had absorbed from Cobb, Arthur, Eames and Yusuf and she pitied the fool who tried. Her mind was a steel trap lined with spikes and the first extractor to try and slip so much as a grocery list from out of it was going to be in for a nasty shock as she and her projections hunted, trapped and deceived them before they got so much as down a level.

So that had been that, the subject changed and she had not given it another thought.

Until now.

She sat back in her chair and stared at the only reminder she kept openly. The heavy bronze bishop sat on her desk, ostensibly a paperweight but to her the last solid link to a time and a place she'd left far behind. She reached out and stroked the cool curves with her fingertips, a small smile tilting her mouth as she recalled the intervening years since she'd flown from Sydney to Los Angeles in the company of a group of men whom she'd had come to respect, even like. She could just recall Cobb's face as his passport was stamped and handed back to him, the flood of relief uncreasing his brow and the happiness that had eluded him for so long began to dawn. Yusuf's nod as he passed her at baggage claim, his soft curls rumpled from his long sleep. Eames, every inch the bored international traveller as he basked in a puddle of sunlight, slipping her a flash of a smile as he met her eyes. And Arthur...

Her eyes closed and she inhaled sharply. This was her life now, this right here and right now. It was too late to wonder what might have been when she had shut that door behind her long ago. She was happy here. Saito's money had allowed her to return to Paris and cherry pick an internship, support herself while she gathered vital work experience then finally, after five years slaving over other people's plans for office blocks and parking garages, to approach some of her peers about forming a partnership.

They had been dubious at first, naturally: They were young, just getting started, nowhere near knowing how to function as a practice but she had persisted, charmed, flattered and finally just bulldozed down the opposition and Porter Associates (they had insisted her name should be used, just in case things crashed and burned she admitted to herself) had opened to commissions. The start had been rocky, no question about it, but it wasn't as if she hadn't expected it to be. There were late nights working until her eyes tingled in their sockets and the taste of coffee soured her tongue; fumbled pitches that almost left them a laughing stock; the gritted teeth moments when she had to try and create work that otherwise would have slipped through their fingers; then, little by little, their star began to rise. Seven years and months of hundred hour work weeks began to pay back. Clients began to seek them out rather than the other way around. They were nominated for prizes. Then they began to win them, and suddenly she found herself named as one of the most influential architects in the world, a hugely grandiose claim at the time. Nevertheless, she kept the article framed on her wall as a curiosity. It never hurt to have a little levity in a profession so concerned with bricks and mortar. It was an incredible, almost unbelievable, vindication of her designs and of her practice and to this day she would still sit back and think "I did this" as her stomach dipped and rose with awe, making her want to laugh like a crazy person. She had done it, and here she was to prove it.

It had been at around this point, when her private life had been clawed back from the demands of work, that she met Lance. A friend of a friend of a friend, he'd shown up at a party as the fellow spare singleton; her hostess had smiled sweetly and admitted she hated an odd number of people at dinner when she cornered her in the kitchen, making Ariadne roll her eyes and decide to make the best of a bad hand since it was only for a couple of hours.

Except, against all her resistance, she had found herself liking him. He was tall (although compared to her, every man seemed to be tall; Lance though was a comfortable height above hers, maybe eight inches or so) with gently curled dark hair and a mouth that seemed to have been cut from marble. His eyes were dark but expressive in the strong shape of his face and his hands... she thought maybe it was his hands that made that first part of her fall in love with him. The long elegant fingers and strong palms that took her hand or her face in their grasp, his low, muddy American accent making her spine tingle as he blessed her with his rare but wonderful smile.

She discovered at their first meeting that he was methodical, a sharp thinker, interested in politics, history and psychology with an unexpectedly dry sense of humour. A man who had travelled and seen the world but had come back to Paris since it was where his happiest memories were. They had talked to each other that first night, ignoring the other guests around them, and as night turned into early morning he took her for a nightcap in a quiet bar where he admitted his past had been in a dangerous profession which he couldn't really discuss, words like classified peppering his speech, but that she was making him want to break promise he’d ever made and pour his secrets into her lap. Perhaps that had been the trigger, watching his dark eyes in the low light as he opened his defences just a chink to see the man beyond; her breath caught in her throat and she'd fallen, as willingly as she'd ever done.

They married four years later, a happy blur of four years in which she would catch herself thinking that if there were such a thing as the perfect person for her he was it, and he'd fallen into her grasp as neatly as a gift from the heavens. She had blessed fate, karma, destiny and luck for making her so fortunate, for giving her this man who seemed to understand her so well, who could read her silences as well as her words and who cared for her in such a quiet, fierce way. Carl had been born two years later, a bouncing boy full of the laughter and chatter that his father sometimes seemed to lack. Ariadne found herself enjoying motherhood in a way she had never thought she might. Carl was an easy child to love, never fussy and full of smiles. All the conflicts she had imagined herself facing, torn between the cradle and the drawing board, never arose. So much so that when Aisling arrived two years later, she had sat in her hospital bed correcting blueprints without a flicker of guilt. Aisling herself was a quieter child, more introspective and prone to playing solitary imaginative games with her doll's house, Lego and toy cars. Her eyes were the same smoky amber as Ariadne's, but her face was her father's, down to her slightly protruding ears. Elf ears, Ariadne called them, pretending to nibble on their curves as Aisling shrieked and giggled "Mommy! Don't eat me!"

There wasn't often opportunity to dwell on that period as time had passed. She still thought of her former compatriots, wondering what became of them. Sometimes she would pause on the corner of the street, thinking she saw the line of Cobb's shoulders or the curve of Arthur's profile through the crowds and start to call out, only for the man to glance back and she would see all too clearly that it had never been them at all. In London she thought she had heard Eames and Yusuf arguing in a pub, the friendly sniping words making her start. She even rose with a smile to greet them, only to see she had heard the distorted sound of the TV set on the wall. The tingle of disappointment had been sharp every time, but something had always pulled her attention away from it before she could dwell for too long. The fleeting moments when she had wondered where they were or what they were doing now had always seemed to melt in the face of her life as it was.

Only two of them had remained visible in the last twenty five years: Saito and Robert Fischer. Saito had by all accounts retreated to his opulent home on the coast of Japan and ran his company through a board of directors. She had followed Robert almost obsessively for a year afterwards, maybe more, watching his familiar face in newsprint and film as he set about pledging to rebuild the infrastructure of the developing world. "I have learned," she watched him say mere months after his inception, "that to try and make the world in your own desired image is a foolish, wasteful endeavour. I am here not to give aid but to provide the means that will sustain it. To give people a chance to be what they can, rather than what we think they should."

But as time passed, he had faded for her, just as they all had. Now she found herself wondering why she'd forgotten so easily. It had been an exciting adventure then, a high point in her life that had arched over all others. How had she let that go?

A photo of Lance, Carl, Aisling and herself sat next to the bishop. They were sitting in a tight bunch, laughing like idiots in the sunshine of the farmhouse garden, Lance's arm draped over her shoulder as Aisling and Carl crowded over her lap. She could almost smell the baby shampoo scent of her children's hair and feel the warm weight of the bodies around her. They were her anchors, that and her work which had won her so much praise and fame. In a world that sometimes made so little sense in it's ability to hurt, destroy and slight they were her fixed points, her magnetic north. Her family. Without them— She pushed the thought back sharply. They were fine, healthy and safe. She had been lucky, so, so lucky. Even if fate didn't exist, she wasn't going to tempt it quite so easily.

Ariadne sat up sharply and shook herself. _“Enough wool gathering, young lady,”_ she heard her mother's soft scold in her memory.

The box. She had been going to open the box.

The exacto knife sliced the tapes as if they were butter, and  the lid eased off with a scratch of cardboard. The smell of aged paper rose to meet her. Dust motes flew up into the air, hitting her in the face and then falling away like shooting stars. She put the lid down carefully, reached in and pulled out the sketchbook, laying on the top. The pages were crinkled at the edges and starting to yellow as she flicked it open. Paris bloomed in front of her, the Paris of her student days when she had spent whole weekends simply drawing, walking and snacking on ficelles and tea. Montmartre, St. Denis, Les Halles, the Latin Quarter; she turned each page as the memories trickled back. Her life had been such an adventure, coming from the States to Paris with her scholarship, studying like crazy, exploring the city then meeting Cobb's group. She smiled at a drawing of the inside of her old apartment, the higgledy-piggledy roofs of the city beyond her window scratched in rough lines. How young had she been? How damn sure of herself all the time? The arrogant, take charge force of her youth came back with a slight grin. Time at least had taken the edge off that, she thought wryly.

The next book was thicker, plans poking out from between the pages and glue smears on one cover. This had been where she kept her working sketches, she recalled suddenly. They were all in here, her fingers fumbled towards a page at random and found Eames' snowscape staring back at her. Another and she was inside the safe room where Fischer Senior must have appeared. A third and Yusuf's city sprawled over a double sheet, the sharp angles of its turns and loops hypnotic.

"How could I have not have remembered? This is... I was... Damn," she whispered to herself with a smile, moving the box over to lay the book flat on her desk.

Each page brought back something new, like the tide uncovering a shipwreck. Arthur's Penrose Steps. The warehouse where Eames had been Browning. The gun emplacement where Cobb had sniper shot Fischer's projections. Arthur's hotel, page after page of it, glossy and glowing like a waxed apple. She'd used fragments of it over and over again, she realised.  All over the world there were buildings that bore the imprint of this one place in their DNA. I wonder if he's ever seen them? she thought idly. I wonder where he went... Arthur as anything other than an extractor seemed wrong in her head, but times and people changed.

The final book was smaller, its covers deep blood red. As she pulled it out she thought she heard a faint noise like a fingertip brushed around the rim of a full glass, a crystalline shimmer of sound that flickered on the edge of pain. Her hands faltered. She really should get back to work, there were things to be done and Aisling's birthday to plan for, plus she needed to arrange a visit to her family in the USA and sort out an article she was writing for the Architectural Review. It could wait, right? But some part of her jabbed the thought aside impatiently. This was important, it insisted.

_Open the book, Ariadne._

She hesitated, fingers idling over the cardboard.

_**Open it.** _

The cover creaked back as if the spine had shrunk.

_(Her desk phone started to ring, a high pitched shrieking bleat. She ignored it.)_

The pages were going faintly grey, their edges stained when she touched them.

_(Her cell purred in her purse, then chimed as its plea was missed.)_

Inside the cover was a boarding pass— Sydney to Los Angeles, seat 2A. It had been crossed in fluorescent pink when she'd passed security, a black pen note indicating her identity and the date.

_(Her computer began to ping an ascending note, its new mail alert going unheeded.)_

She took a deep breath and opened the first page.

_(Her desk phone rang again, louder this time, a blaring digitized scream.)_

Arthur looked back at her. A dark man in pen and ink with the slash of his tie red at his throat, his face set in a dry little smile with a shadow of his dimpled cheek.

Oh god, how had she forgotten his face?

His dark eyes and smooth hair, that finely drawn lip that had touched hers for three seconds and left her blushing like a schoolgirl, his voice, his scent of coffee, Acqua Di Gio and fine cloth; the mind that had trained hers from sprawling weed patch to fine rose; the memories erupted suddenly and burst over her as she clawed each page over. Yusuf making tea, glasses on the end of his nose. Cobb writing something on the whiteboard in his teacherly hand. Eames making a paper airplane. The workshop, the dry, echoing space full of old papers and machinery. Arthur, over and over again. Cobb and Eames laughing in the doorway. Yusuf loading the PASIV. Saito fast asleep. Eames making a face at himself in a mirror. Cobb staring at her models.  Arthur, standing, sitting, sleeping, talking, reading, drinking, looking out of the windows... Where were they? Why had she never seen them again? The thoughts crowded in, pushing and shoving their way through her head. Why? they all shouted. When did you stop asking about them? Why did you let it go so easily?

_("Ariadne?" her intercom blared)_

The crackle of a voice made her start. The book jumped forwards in her hands as her body twitched reflexively, a corner hitting the bishop with a soft tap. Time seemed to slow as it began to tilt, the light shifting over it as it leant, further and a little more—

_(Someone was knocking at her door now. "Ariadne? Are you OK?")_

—She was holding her breath for some reason; why? She'd done this before. Hadn't she?—

_(Another sharp knock, harder and with more force, the handle ratcheting back and forth.)_

The small piece wobbled, teetering like a ballerina en pointe,

( _"Ariadne!")_

and neatly rolled back to standing with a noise like a coin dropping.

_"No."_

The sweat was a cold shock down her spine. She leant forwards, put out one hand and touched the bishop. Cold, solid, real. The room tilted, her vision tunnelling down to this minute fragment of matter as she extended her pointer finger, laid it against the head of the piece and pushed, hard enough that it would fall.

She knew it would. She could recall standing over the vice carving out the hollow that weighted it then marking it with a firmly scored A on the base. This was her totem, she knew its shape and form, each nick and groove of its age. It was as familiar to her as her children's faces. It couldn't lie. It wouldn't lie.

" _So you know beyond a doubt that you are not in someone else's..._ " Arthur's voice tailed off gently in her head.

_("We're going to get someone to open the door! You're scaring us!")_

The piece moved, yawing away from the surface like a little boat heeling to in a storm and for a second she had thought it would fall. It seemed to be just on the point of tipping over, the angle between it and the desktop widening as the relief started in her bones— but too soon. The head made a tight ellipse, the weight shifted around the base as ran around on its edge, wobbled to one side and stopped.

Solid. Familiar. Upright.

The door crashed open as her assistant, two of the partners and the custodian fell in through it, only to find Ariadne Moses gripping the edge of her desk with fingers gone white from the tension, her face drained of blood, her eyes fixed on her paperweight and her voice, so faint it was a whisper like glass breaking in the eye of a storm.

_"I'm still dreaming."_

~*~

 


	2. Chapter 2

~*~

Ariadne stood by the tall French doors of her dining room, clutching a cup of tea and watching the rain hammer down from the pewter sky. _Is this how it was for Mal?_ she wondered as the water fell in silver sheets. To know beyond doubt that the life you were living was false and that up there there was your real life, waiting for you to come back and pick it up where you left off? To know you were the only real person in a world you had created, like a child playing with their toys who looks up one day, the realisation that what they hold in their fists is plastic, wood and paint suddenly too sharp on their face?

The noise of the rain was so loud it was if the house was being pelted with pebbles. In the garden beyond leaves bowed under the downpour, flower petals mashed into the dark earth and the small fish pond bubbled where water struck it. The afternoon had turned prematurely dark, but she had switched on no lights. On the table behind her a legal pad lay in a puddle of sunny yellow against the deep brown wood, on top of that the pen she'd been scrawling notes with, trying to catch her thoughts as they unravelled around her until one had stuck out from the mess.

If this was a dream and she knew it, she could interact with it, even manipulate it.

Something small, something tiny, something that wouldn't disrupt this world; that would be a fair test, surely? The barrel of her pen was navy blue as it sat in her hand. She stared at it,frowned and brought her concentration to bear on it. Thunder had rumbled outside and the house quivered.

 _This is stupid_ , she scoffed to herself. _I'm having a breakdown. God damn it_. She went to close her fist around the pen, and in that second it changed almost with a snap, like a camera stuttering from one frame to the next, suddenly deep red where it had been blue. She was holding it up to her eyes when the sky cracked again, lightning flashing in the window panes and the rain began to crash down.

She hadn't let go of her totem since she'd watched it right itself the second time. She'd driven home with it tucked in her bra, then sat with it clutched in her fist as she wrote, as if somehow feeling its shape on her skin would hold her together while she worked this out. Everything else could be flung aside, but this piece of truth was the only thread she had. Now she held it in her fingers, the top pressed to her lips in a pilgrim's kiss as she stood there in her silent dream house, waiting for her unreal family to come back.

Her gut twisted at that. The last twenty years had been a lie, a fabric woven out of her fantasies and subconscious desires. Skewed that way, it all fell neatly into place. Of course Lance was perfect for her; she had created him. Of course Aisling and Carl were so easy to balance with her passion for her work. Of course she had won awards, been so happy, fought through everything to eventual success, of course she had. She'd lived the life she'd expected to have all those years… No, _no_ ; she was still that woman back wherever her body was lying. Her age was as much an illusion as the world itself. She was still Ariadne Porter, twenty three years of age, architecture postgraduate, and she had never backed down in the face of the impossible, the illegal or the inconceivable.

The front door banging open made her start. "Carl,” she heard Lance call. “Shoes off! Bags upstairs please, and change out of your school clothes.” Two overexcited childish voices overlapped, feet thumping on the stairs as they tore up them, bouncing and calling to each other like excited puppies.

Lance’s keys clattered on the table, then his measured steps come down the hall.

“Hey,” he said as he came through the doorway, speaking in his calm, low voice. His face was etched with concern as he looked at her. “Work called me, they said you got upset at the office. Is everything OK?” He came forward, closing the space between them as he clasped her arms in his hands. “Why are you standing here in the dark? Are you sick?”

Ariadne looked at him, the familiar shape of his face in the dim light making her suddenly terrified. What if she was wrong? Her hand clenched around her totem, feeling it bite into her palm. _No, she wasn’t wrong,_ her courage welled up inside her, she had to leave, she had to make this all stop, and only by force of her own will could she do so.

“We need to talk,” she said in firm voice. “I realised something today. I can’t stay here.”

Lance’s eyebrows drew up in confusion“What, in the house? Look, it’s fine,” he said quickly before she could answer him. “I was thinking, let’s go to the States sooner than we planned. Let’s go today, tonight. You’ve been working too hard, you need a break. We’ll visit your mom, let her spoil the kids, you can go relax, we can go hiking,” he said in a rush. “We can pack now and get an overnight flight,” he pleaded as Ariadne shook her head.

“No, you don’t understand.” She watched his face start to fall. “I have to leave all of this.”

"Ariadne, you're scaring me.” There was an edge in his voice now. “What are you trying to say?”

“This is not real,” she said calmly, shaking her head again. “None of this is real. I made you up because I thought you were what I wanted, and now I have to let you go.”

“Ariadne, this is insane.” Lance grabbed her chin in his hand. “Look at me. Look at this house, look at our children. This is as real as you are.” His fingers tightened around her jaw as she tried to pull away.

“Let me go.” She twisted her body, pushing against him with her free hand. “Let me go! Now!”

“No.” He grabbed at her closed hand, crushing his fingers around her totem. “Give me that, that _thing_. You should never have kept it and I should never have allowed—” The pain in her fingers was sharp, numbing her hand as the blood was squeezed out. For the first time since she’d met him she was truly and utterly afraid of her husband’s strength and will. His hands were biting into her flesh, clawing at her as she tried to struggle free, her fear and panic making her flail at him uselessly.

“Don’t touch it! Don’t you ever try and touch it!” she yelled as he grabbed at her. “Don’t you ever touch me!” She lashed out with her right foot, stamping down hard with her heel on the arch of his foot.

“Fuck,” Lance spat. “You—” But the word was lost as Ariadne slammed her foot into his shin, then dropped her head and crashed into his sternum with all the force she could muster, feeling his body arch around her blows. He yanked at her as he fell, nearly toppling her onto him as she struck out with her foot again, aiming random kicks and jerks at him, wrenching her arms free as she stumbled backwards, panting and furious.

“ _Never_ ,” she snarled, “ _touch my totem_. _And never touch me again_.” Lance stared at her from where he had fallen, his face furious.

“This isn’t over,” he said in a deadly quiet voice.

“Yes, it is. I’m going to wake up.”

“You’re crazy.” He sounded so calm it made her go cold. “This is your reality. You let it go and you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

“Better than to go insane in a fantasy,” she spat back.

As she looked up from where Lance was sprawled on the carpet, she saw Carl and Aisling watching her. Carl’s eyes were wide, his hands over his mouth as he looked on in stunned silence, frozen to the spot as he looked from her to his father and back again. But Aisling was looking at her, a strange little sad half smile on her face, her brows gathered and her hands clasped. The burning swell in Ariadne’s chest was sudden and terrible.

“Come here,” she said softly, holding out her hand to them. Carl glanced at Lance again, then tottered slowly towards her as she knelt down. His still baby soft face was pale, and there were tears at the corners of his eyes. “Come on,” Ariadne felt her voice tremble. “It’s OK, I won’t hurt you, baby.”

Carl fell into her arms, his small hands clinging on to her as he began to cry into her shoulder and without thinking she bent and kissed the top of his head, his fine hair against her skin as she rocked him. “Come on,” she hushed. “Come on, my dear heart. It’s all right.”

Aisling watched them for a moment, then walked slowly past her father and into Ariadne’s arms, pressing her face into her mother’s chest and stretching her arms around her ribcage as Ariadne wrapped her close. The familiar weight against her, the shape and lines of her children; she remembered the first time she’d felt Carl kick, a shuddering ripple from inside that made her catch her breath; the day Aisling was born, the searing pain followed by the rush of love so hard it felt like a rain of blows. She kissed the crown of Aisling’s head, then rested her cheek there, holding them to her and feeling her throat close at what she had to do.

“Listen to me,” she said gently. “I have to go now.”

“Mom, why?” Carl hiccuped. “Please don’t, please.”

“I have to, Carl. I need to be somewhere else. Look at me.” She leant back and saw her children’s faces gazing at her, confusion and fear welling up. “I love you both very, very much. I love you like nothing else I have ever known. You are the best parts of me.” Her throat squeezed against the words and her eyes burned as she pressed kisses to both their foreheads, pulling them into her as hard as she could. “I won’t forget you,” she promised, inhaling their soft scent for the last time. “You will always be with me.”

“Mom, please.” Carl tried one last time as she closed her eyes, rested her head on theirs and took a slow deep breath. _Let go_ , she told herself gently as she had learned to do so long ago. _Let it dissolve. Let it go back. Suppress it_. Her heart clenched in her chest, feeling sorrow rear up and twist around her before she brutally pushed it down. _It’s a dream,_ she chanted to herself. _Just a dream; I am real, this is a dream and I want to wake up. Wake up, wake up Ariadne, wake_ —

There was a sudden nauseating feeling of falling in her head, as if she were being spun on a rollercoaster then dropped to earth. Her arms closed on empty air and she tumbled forward onto her knees, the ground under her gritty and coarse. She opened her eyes, then screwed them up again against the bright, pale light that was pouring down on her.

Her arms were empty. Her house was gone. She was alone, in a blank, barren landscape whose only feature was the line where the scorched sand met the faded blue of the sky. On the ground in front of her, her totem stood bolt upright, shining in the sun as if it was brand new. She’d suppressed her own subconscious, that much she could tell, but where was she now? Was she awake?

“Ariadne?”

She twisted around in shock, feeling the sand hollow under her knees, to find Aisling standing behind her, still in her grey pinafore dress with her unravelling braids on her shoulders, the same small, sad smile on her face.

“Aisling?” she whispered. “What’s going on?”

“Ariadne.” Aisling said her name again, and held out her hand, palm open towards her. Laying in her grasp was Ariadne’s old watch, the square face, golden case and brown leather straps that she hadn’t seen for years coming back to her in a sharp rush.

“Take it,” Aisling insisted calmly, stretching towards her. “Please, Mommy,” she added when Ariadne hesitated. The words stung, and Ariadne felt herself recoil, a hollow, cold ache trying to swallow her as she struggled to keep herself in check. She reached out and took the watch from her daughter, taking it between the barest tips of her fingers so she didn’t have to touch her. Even looking at her felt like standing in a rain of breaking glass.

She tore her eyes away and looked down at her watch. She remembered vaguely that sspan he’d stopped wearing it because it was broken, and it still seemed that way. The hands looked as if they’d stopped, locked forever at 2.28pm. But as she watched the second hand suddenly jumped, and ticked forward one beat.“Time dilation,” she murmured, shaking her head. “I forgot. I forgot everything."

“I’m sorry,” Aisling said softly. “This was the only way. But now you need to know that you are not alone here.”

“What?” Ariadne’s head jerked up, frowning at Aisling as her hand closed around her watch in a fist. “Who else is here?”, she demanded, “is that why I can’t wake up?”

“Everyone. You all need to wake up or this won’t end.”

“Everyone? Everyone who? Cobb? Saito?”

“Everyone who you shared the dream with. All of them,” Aisling said sadly.

“Whose dream is this?” Ariadne demanded. “Who’s the dreamer?”

“Ariadne.” Aisling’s form shimmered, fading and softening in the bright light as if it was being bleached out by the sun. “This is Limbo. You’re all dreaming together.”

~*~

For what felt like an hour  Ariadne sat on her heels, staring at her watch and feeling the sun hit her back while she thought.

Arthur had said that Limbo was raw, unconstructed dream space, and the people who could shape it were those who had been there before. That might only have been Cobb to begin with, but now that would include herself, Saito and Fischer. She had watched Cobb and Mal’s Limbo creations fall apart; so did that mean Cobb had unwittingly wiped the slate clean and they had all started out in the world he had wanted? Or had he and she started to build it together out of their own minds, the others at first populating it with their projections, then building up environments around them as they moved further apart? But only she and Robert had seemed to come back to the first level dream after the kick, so did that mean that she alone had ensured that Yusuf’s city had been Limbo’s new shape? Unless Robert’s desire to believe he was in reality, or the fact he was aware he was dreaming had played a part. The only way they could be in Limbo together was if they had all failed to ride the layers up with the kick, instead somehow dying in the process.

Once she was here, her projections (she crushed the word _family_ down brutally, feeling the desire to bring them back rise) had resisted her attempts to become conscious of her state. They had mastered derailing and distracting her, even as her own mind had refused to dwell on the subject with the passing years. Instead it had come back in fragments and scraps, pieces that swept away from her without resistance, as if her mind had decided to protect her from the reality of where she was and wrap her in the cocoon of an ideal life. Until today that is, when it had come back in a flood. Was something changing, something that had softened her psyche’s defences for a second to let the truth breakthrough?

She shook herself sharply. Whatever the case, she had managed to suppress her own subconscious enough to render this part of Limbo empty. The fact she was alone probably meant that they weren’t sharing spaces or environments like they had in other dreams; or if they were, no one was currently sharing this space with her. Which meant she had to find out where they were, or else sit on her ass and wait for them to show up.

Ariadne picked her totem up, stood up and dusted the sand off her slacks. There was nothing, no matter which direction she looked in. Nothing but flat, featureless, open space.

She put her watch on her wrist, tucked her totem into her shirt pocket, and started walking.

~*~

At first she walked with her head down, her eyes firmly on the ground, counting off her steps as she moved forwards. Every time a thought of her dream threatened to intrude she would instantly start listing the characteristics of the five classical orders in order of their appearance in the record; or the formation of sand as a geological process; or run through the recipe for making her dad’s campfire chili from buying the groceries to putting it in bowls. It was a constant effort, because every other second seemed to bring back something. A word that Lance had said, or something Aisling had done or Carl had made. But she knew somehow that one slip of her resolve to keep it all tightly folded in could bring them back and leave her having to suppress them again. She wished many times during that walk that she could stop the physical feeling of loss. The void that her thoughts would slip and tumble down if she let them. The ache in her throat and chest that wouldn’t seem to stop. If she dared to even skirt the place in her head she kept dragging herself from, then she would suddenly feel as if she was a glass flask filled to the top, and one more drop would make her overflow. So she would drag herself in, letting the tenderness she felt in her skin or the airless tightness in her chest grow sharp enough to take over, then she would begin again:

 _Doric_ — _Greek; broad, flared cylinder, wider at base. Stood directly on the stylobate. Twenty parallel grooves per column. Topped with a rounded molding or echinus. Plain, square abacus. Entablature of a plain architrave. Alternating design of triglyphs and metopes above. The Parthenon; The Temple Of Hephaestus. Roman; slimmer column, no fluting, crown moulding at juncture of frieze and abacus. Smaller entablature. Centred triglyph at corners. The Theatre of Marcellus. Ionic—_

Endless words and images reduced to a mind numbing chant against the background of the her feet sloughing through the sand. Every step, every word, was another fibre strengthening the wall between her and her dream. If she built it strong enough then maybe she would succeed.

~*~

She lifted her head when the ground began to change and her feet felt the firmer ground under each step. The colour moved from bleached white gold into grey, then thinning so a darker soil began to show underneath the shifting layer of sand. When she looked up, instead of the unwavering line at the horizon there was now the saw toothed outline of a mountain range, stretching away either side as far as she could see. The sky was freshly washed blue, crisp as peppermint, and the snow on the peaks sparkled in the unflinching light, bright against the black rock. The ground shift from sand to dirt fell wide, gentle curves, as if a wave of it had broken over the brown earth and failed to roll back.

Ariadne scanned the scene, taking in the plain, the low bushes and spindly trees, the rocks scattering the ground. Not a soul was there. No birds sang. No animals called or moved. No one was looking back at her.

“OK,” she said to herself firmly. “You first.” She took out her totem, set it on the ground and knocked it with her finger. It barely moved, tipping to one side and dropping back as if it could not be bothered to try. “Definitely not my dream then,” Ariadne pocketed it and checked her watch. The hands hadn’t moved. “One second up above is, what? It’s powers of twelve, so; shit, come on, Ariadne...Two thousand, seven hundred, thirty,” she frowned, “six here. That’s three hundred and forty five minutes, which is five and three quarter hours. Which means a day here is just over four seconds in reality. Which makes a minute above,” she paused, “two weeks here, give or take. So, I’ve been walking for less than five hours. Great.” She glanced around again. “Oh, Aisling,” her throat tightened at the image of her daughter and she swallowed hard, “a map might have been useful, with glowing dots or something to tell me when I’m near one of the others. How the hell am I supposed to find anyone in infinite space?”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then another, making herself focus on the rush of air through her nose, down into her lungs, the expansion of her ribs. “OK, this isn’t impossible. It’s just difficult. Come on Ariadne, think.” She stood still, listening to the soft hush of the wind, tasting the clean air and feeling coolness on her skin. Then, very faintly, she heard a new sound; a gentle bubbling, a small chatter of liquid rising and pouring over the ground. She opened her eyes again, and started forwards, scanning the earth around her, checking each pile of stones, each depression, until finally she almost fell into the runnel, the thin thread of water pulsing through darkening the earth as it wound away.

Ariadne bent down, and cautiously dipped her finger into the flow. It was freezing cold, and when she tasted it the mineral tang filled her mouth, washing out the dust she must have inhaled in the desert. Before she knew it she was on her knees, scooping palmfuls up and swallowing as fast as the aching cold would let her, eventually falling back onto her ass with a plop, panting and swiping at her mouth as she realised with beautiful clarity: Where there is a water course, people tend to be too. Follow the water, find— well, someone, even if it’s a projection. _It’s a better idea than just wandering around_ , she told herself.

She picked herself up, and set off with new purpose

~*~

The stream meandered very little. It was near on a straight line, sometimes snaking into a bend or curve, but mostly it ran in a neat stripe that slashed the ground apart as the water moved through it. As Ariadne watched it widen and deepen, she began to see that the flow of water wasn’t constant. Instead it came in pulses, fast enough that the water never stopped moving, yet still it slowed and sped up, over and over in a nearly hypnotic beat, as if driven by a pump rather than the pressure of it leaving the earth.

But while the water changed, the landscape around her varied very little. The ground stayed flat, dark and scattered with meager trees and spiny grasses. The mountains loomed to her left, while the desert stayed to her right, still visible as a heat shimmer when the water led her further into the plain. There was still no life aside from the plants, the quiet only broken by her footsteps and the water moving. Even when she looked up, scanning the horizon, all she could see was empty space, gentle rolling hills in the distance smudged with dusty, dark green and tawny shades of rust and ochre the only hint that this place wasn’t simply an endless flat prairie. What she’d do when she reached the hills she had no idea. The water might sink underground, and there would be no way she could follow it then; or stop completely, leaving her back with her original problem. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it she told herself firmly, feeling the internal wavering that asked if she was sure, after everything, that she wasn’t somehow crazy, somehow lost and needing to get back to—

“Fuck it,” Ariadne snarled at herself. “Stop that. You’re dreaming. Walk.” She grabbed her totem and clenched it her fist, letting its lines bite into her hand. “This is what’s real.” She spoke a word with each step forward. “You are what’s real.” She repeated this to herself, over and over, watching the water, watching the horizon; letting the sun warm her back and her feet meet the earth until the chant drowned out everything and she felt as blank as the land around her.

~*~

When the house appeared, it was as a wavering, grey shape sunk in a puddle of green at the foot of the hills. At first she thought it was trick of the light, squinting at the little block with it’s pointed roof. But as she looked it sharpened, light twinkled on the glass of its windows, and a hair fine line of black appeared, probably asphalt she decided, winding away from the fields of green around the building and up, over the horizon and out of sight. She looked down, and saw that ahead the stream widened to a ribbon of pulsing water, coursing across the now gently curved earth towards the house, chattering over the stones in its bed as it seemed to speed up in anticipation.

She tried to gauge how far away she was, holding up her forefinger to measure the building against it. Perhaps another hour, she decided, squinting at the spot in the distance. Then what? She asked herself. A projection might sense her as foreign to this dream, and might attack given the chance. But they might also offer her a clue as to who’s dream this was, and how she might find the dreamer. If she asked the right questions, of course. Cobb might have been able to swing Mr. Charles with Fischer, but she had nowhere near the knowledge to negotiate a subconscious that didn’t know it was dreaming, or even how to make it leave her be if it was hell bent on tearing her to shreds. Then her only choice would be to run. Perhaps there was a car there; maybe stealing it would be better than trying to engage projections. Or perhaps she could try blending in, playing a lost hiker or someone who had had a breakdown and wanted to hitch a lift to the nearest town. Ariadne watched the house, but she was too far away to see any signs of life. _No point worrying before time_ , she decided, and clasped her totem tighter. _Up and out, Ariadne; up and out;_ she told herself as she fixed the house in her sights and began to trudge towards it.

With the building in front of her as a distraction, she began to use the details that came into focus as a way of keeping her mind fixed in the present. The green around the house began to separate into grass, trees and hedges; then she could see what she thought was an orchard, a yard and fields of grass rippling up to the edge of the plain where they broke off against the bare earth. Outbuildings, a few small sheds and a long, silvered grey fence emerged, a gate firmly shut where it met the road leading out. The house grew, looming up out of the land to show weathered shingles covering it like dragon scales, a pitched slate grey roof, and large, white framed windows some arched, some neat and square in the softly faded wood. As she drew closer she could see a swing hanging from one of the trees in the back yard, a cheerful, bright red seat that moved in the wind, and unbidden an image of Carl popped into her head, laughing with his perfect white baby teeth bared in a delighted grin as she pushed him back and forth on his swing set; the sound of his excited chirps and squeals knifed through her, making her want to buckle even as she tore the memory away.

 _The front door is red,_ she forced herself to notice, _there are four levels inside according the window placement. The porch is only half the width of the frontage._ The water by her feet was louder now, jumping and splashing over the ground, so she forced herself to hear it instead.

By the time she reached the gate she still hadn’t seen anyone move on the property. Even this close all she could see was the reflections of the hills and the sky in the windows; and all shecould hear was the grass hushing and sighing, tree branches creaking every so often and the lively motion of the water, which babbled away, sneaking under the fence and onto the land, vanishing out of sight. Cautiously she let herself in, closing the gate softly behind her. The driveway led up to the house, curving around in front of a low wooden building with its broad doors propped open. One side was empty, but on the other was a black SUV, looking freshly polished. Ariadne scanned the lush yard around her, taking in the flowers that seemed to be blooming defiantly despite their surroundings; honeysuckle, red and yellow roses and lavender all thriving in bright splashes of colour; the thick, well kept lawn; the trees all in full leaf; one holding a beautifully made tree house with round windows and a sloping roof. Aisling would- _No_ , she snapped to herself.

She walked tentatively to the house, half expecting someone to call out or a face to appear in one of the windows. But she crossed the yard, climbed the porch steps and finally found herself in front of the deep, red front door without being waylaid. The eerie silence was making the back of her neck prickle as she reached up to knock. She had half decided by now  that if there was no one there then she would try and take the SUV if she could, follow the road and make for the next place she could find, town or city, to see what she could discover. If there was someone here, well, she would play the lost hiker. Say she’d dumped her pack in the mountains to make walking easier, ask for a ride, see if she could make any deductions from there.

The sound of the brass knocker striking was loud and alien, and it startled her slightly as she dropped it and stepped back. For a few moments all she could hear was the wind, the water and her own heartbeat, suddenly loud and irregular in her ears. She swallowed, and all of a sudden found herself hoping that she was alone. Who knew who might be in a place like this, she found the thought creeping up on her, images from too many horror movies sidling in on its heels; just as she heard a door open inside the house and footsteps come towards her.

 _OK_ , she told herself firmly as they stopped, there was a pause and the bolt snicked back, _don’t antagonise. Be calm, stick to your story. If all else fails, run._ She lifted her chin, consciously relaxed her hands and prepared to smile as the handle turned, the latch clicked and the door swung open.

“Ariadne,” a man’s voice, deep and rich with private amusement said from just beyond it. “Did you forget your keys again?”

~*~


	3. Chapter 3

~*~

For a moment she forgot to breathe. Shock rooted her to the spot and left her staring as the owner of the voice looked back at her, his faint smile making the corners of his eyes crinkle, the shadow of a dimple emerging in his cheek.

 _“Arthur?”_ She replied faintly, staring back at him. His hair was more grey than dark brown, but still worn smoothed back and tidy, then ends darker than the roots as if they were still as young as she remembered. The shape of his face was still the same, the line of his jaw sharp and his mouth the same finely shaped curve, his eyes dark and steady; but lines had worn into his skin, creasing his forehead, carving a bracket between his cheeks and his lips and making the lines around his eyes deepen. His ears still jutted out, and he was still lean, no softening in his lines from fat or indolence. He was the man she recalled, but at the same time someone she didn’t know at all. He would be in his fifties, she thought as she examined him, still smiling at her as she gawped at him. Was he a projection, or the real thing? Then his words came back. _Had she what?_

“I—” she stammered. But before she could say anything else he came forward, wrapped his arm around her then his mouth descended on hers. She felt herself stiffen for a moment, her body rigid up against his, then his hand trailed down her spine, his kiss deepening and some part of her unwound, something she had left behind so long ago stirring inside her, shaking off the years and pushing up towards the light. He even smelt the same, she remembered now; the linden blossom and rare wood of his aftershave, coffee, mint and clean cotton. It was like stumbling across a signpost in the emptiness, and for some reason it made her want to collapse into him and not let go.

It took a huge portion of her will to pull back from him, putting some space between their bodies as she looked up at him.

“Arthur, who do you think I am?” He grinned at her, his hand still smoothing her lower back.

“Ariadne, what is this? A game? Did going to New York give you ideas? Did you miss me that much?” he finished in a whisper, bending to kiss her again.

Her hand shot out, pressing into his solar plexus and pushing him back.

“Arthur, you need to listen to me,” she insisted, enunciating each word slowly. “Who do you think I am?”

His face shifted, the teasing ebbing away, his hold on her loosening and the lines of his smile becoming fainter and more brittle.

“Perhaps we should go inside and have some coffee, then we can talk. Come on,” he said calmly, holding the door as she stared at him. “Come on,” he repeated. Ariadne swallowed hard, then walked past him, unable to stop herself looking around as she did so. The hall was dim, the pale walls hung with paintings that she couldn’t see properly in the low light, except for one, half visible in the open door, a stylised figure wrapped tightly in red thread so only the eyes and mouth were visible.

“This way,” Arthur shut the door behind her, brushing past and through the open door ahead. She followed, and found herself in a beautiful, high ceilinged kitchen cum dining cum living room. Huge windows at either end spilled light over the stone floor which was dotted here and there with richly jewel coloured rugs. A pair of deep red, oversized couches and a dark wooden coffee table sat in a cozy arrangement to her right, bookcases stuffed with volumes and pictures flanking the window. In front of her was a long table made in paler wood, four chairs on either side and one at each end. The furthest end from her was an open laptop and a pile of papers, a tablet and a cellphone set off to one side and a half full mug of coffee. At the far end was a neat, bright kitchen with what looked like marble counters, birch doors and at least two ovens as well as a hob. It was luxury played in a discreet key; warm, not ostentatious.

Arthur was standing at the sink with his back to her and the tap running, so she made for the bookshelves while he was occupied, hoping for a photograph that might confirm the idea that had started to take root in her head.

All the same, when she reached the first picture the shock was almost as intense as seeing Arthur again. It was of Arthur, the Arthur she could recall so clearly in all his crisp lines and sharp smiles, standing in a brightly lit garden in a dark suit and white shirt. Next to him, in a plain ivory dress, her dark hair loose and her smile almost radioactively happy as he held her hands, was herself. Not a woman who looked like her, but her, just as she had been in her twenties.

“Shit,” Ariadne breathed, reaching out to brush the glass with her fingertips, wondering if her doppelganger’s face would melt away when she did so. She turned her head, and there she was again, this time holding a small, dark haired girl who looked so much like Aisling it hurt to see. The again, with Arthur and the girl sitting on a beach. With a little boy, his light brown hair curly over his forehead as he grabbed at her nose and she laughed. Over and over again, her face but not her, living this life with him. Her skin felt cold and tight as she felt the pieces fall into place. She wasn’t his mistress, not his lover or an old flame; she was his partner. She, the projection passing for her, was Arthur’s wife and the mother of at least two children with him. And to think, all those years ago she’d decided that he would never do more than flirt with her; perhaps stretch to a casual fling, but nothing permanent or serious because— Arthur? Settling for an architecture student who had more front than the entire Jersey shore, but underneath it all was sometimes anxious, shy and downright teenage in his presence? Not seeing him after LA had reminded her that she had plans for her own life, and they didn’t include pining for what she couldn’t have. But it seemed that Arthur had had no such qualms.

The smell of coffee interrupted her thoughts, the smoky tang that usually divided her sleep from wake making her turn to find Arthur coming towards her, a pair of mugs in his hands.

“Here.” He held hers out, watching as she took it and sipped. Strong with milk, just like she’d always taken it.

“Delicious, thank you,” she said politely, and Arthur half smiled.

“That’s good.” He nodded, taking a mouthful from his own cup and in one smooth motion, so fast it seemed to happen in the blink of her eyes, raising his right arm and pointing a gun at her forehead.

“Now.” His voice shifted suddenly, the tone cold and hard as his expression. “Why don’t you start by telling me who you work for, how you found me and why you are the spitting image of my wife.” The last word came out with such force it seemed to curdle the air around it.

Ariadne made herself stay still and not flinch. She could see the barrel of the gun in her peripheral vision, close enough that the bullet would shatter her skull open like an egg hitting the floor. Arthur’s face was locked into a furious scowl, his eyes narrow and his mouth in a harsh line.

 

“Arthur, you need to listen to me.” She tried to keep her voice level, but she couldn’t lie to herself, she could feel the thick knot of fear pressing at the back of throat. “This is a dream. We didn’t wake up from Fischer on the plane in LA. Something happened, something went wrong, and now we’re in Limbo, living these lives. But they’re not real, and we have to wake up.”

Arthur flicked the safety off with a casual motion. “Bullshit. You have thirty seconds. Who do you work for?”

“I don’t, Arthur. I’m not Cobol or anything like that. I’m just me, I’m just Ariadne, and I’m trapped here, just like you are unless we suppress our dreams and our projections and try to wake up.”

“You’re lying,” Arthur stated baldly. “I don’t work in dreams anymore, and neither does my wife; so the chances that we’re in Limbo are less than nil. So you go back to your employer, and you tell them to leave us alone.”

“Why don’t you work in dreams anymore?” The words came out of her in a strange, high voice. She was guessing, but anything that stopped him from killing her, even a delay that gave her a chance to think, was worth the gamble.

“What?” Arthur spat, and for an instant she saw a flicker of confusion in his eyes.

“Why don’t you work in dreams anymore? You haven’t since Fischer, right? You woke up on the plane, you walked out of LAX and you never touched the PASIV again, did you?” The furrow between his eyebrows deepened as he stared at her. “Did you, Arthur?” she pressed. “Where’s your totem? Have you checked your totem since that day, since you woke up and left Fischer’s dream?”

“This is bullshit,” Arthur repeated, but his tone was weakening. Somewhere in the house a phone started to ring, shrill and unceasing. She saw his eyes dart towards the source of the sound.

“No, look at me, Arthur,” she demanded. “Think about it: Have I— Has your wife ever checked her totem in front of you? Have you seen her do that? Has she ever, ever talked to you about working in dreams again?” Arthur’s expression was shifting now, the anger fading into confusion. She plunged on desperately. “I loved it, you know I did. Did you ever wonder why I would just give it up? Why you would just give it up, and we’d both settle for playing happy families in the middle of nowhere?”

She could hear herself, loud and forceful in her ears. The phone was still ringing, but now it was joined by the bleat of his cell as it trembled on the table. Arthur shook his head, as if he was trying to concentrate and failing.

“Arthur, look at me,” she snapped. “What did your Ariadne tell you? That Limbo had scared her so badly she never wanted to dream again; never even to talk about it again? And Saito paid us so much we could live without it if we wanted, so you just walked away?”

“That’s none of your business.” Arthur’s snarl tried to take over his face again, but it wavered as his tablet began to emit a high chirp of sound as persistent as a drill.

“You need to think about it.” She raised her voice. “Think about why everything that’s happened in your life has happened. Why you’re here, why everything is this way.”  Arthur’s mouth opened but no sound came out as she pressed on, over the sound of another set of beeps and a trills starting in the background. “Why you went along with it, all of it. And why from that day to this, every time you tried to think about dreaming, or Fischer, something would make it leave your head. Something would happen, and distract you, and it would slip through your fingers; just like it’s trying to make you do now.”

The ringing and chirping was a cacophony by now; every device in the house seemed to be emitting bleats, beeps and sirens, whirling together into a storm of grating, clanging noise that made her ears and skull ache.

"You’re dreaming, Arthur! We both are! And what’s worse is that somehow we’ve been conspiring with ourselves to stay this way. Where’s your totem, Arthur?” she screamed at him over everything, as he stood there, frowning at her in disbelief, his gun arm dropped to his side as if he’d forgotten it. “Where is it!” she bellowed as hard as she could, feeling her throat and chest push the words almost to the point of pain.

Arthur’s eyes widened, and suddenly all the noise stopped dead. The quiet was as vast as the sky, as vast as the plain

Ariadne watched as he looked at her, then as his eyes unfocused for a few seconds.

"Arthur?" She risked softly. "Did you–?"

"It’s in my study. On my desk. I see it every day, but you’re right. I can’t remember checking it since LA. Or before LA; in Sidney maybe.” His face screwed up as his words stumbled. “How could I never have done it? Why haven’t I thought of– It doesn’t make sense.” He scrubbed his free hand through his hair.

“I know that this is difficult.” Ariadne took a step forward. She could see that words weren’t going to be enough for this; that Arthur was going to need proof, and the only proof she had that he wouldn’t dismiss meant revealing something she had once been warned to keep private or risk her hold on reality. But that would be no good if they were trapped here, she told herself. Arthur wasn’t Cobb. He’d not use it against her. She had to believe that, or it might mean that every faith she was hanging on him in this moment, to know and see through the dream to the raw substance beneath, it would all have been false. “But I can prove that things here aren’t the way they should be. Look.”

She put her hand in her pocket, and took out her totem, holding it out in her palm so he could see, but not close enough to allow him to touch. Then with great care she put it on the coffee table, held out her index finger and pushed it as hard as she could. She watched Arthur watch it tilt, bow, then with a gravity twisting loop de loop, right itself.

"Jesus," Arthur whispered. “I– Shit!” he spat out, turned on his heel and left the room. Ariadne heard his agitated steps climb the stairs, a door open and crash into a wall, then a long period of nothing. She dropped onto the nearest couch and closed her eyes in sympathy, letting her head rest in her hands. In the distance she heard a grumble of thunder echoing off the mountains, and when she glanced out of the windows the horizon was changing from china blue to muddied, leaden grey.

Arthur came back down the stairs slowly, his tread measured and calm. He walked into the room without a word or a glance in her direction, knelt down at the coffee table, opened his clenched hand and his die tumbled out, bouncing to a stop next to her bishop.

“Someone else’s dream,” he bit off the word as if it tasted repulsive. “Or Limbo,” he corrected himself, and Ariadne watched his jaw tighten as he inhaled sharply. “You’re Ariadne, aren’t you?” He said to their totems.

“Yes,” she replied.

He bit the inside of his lips and swallowed. “My wife...” He stopped, then gathered himself. “My wife is a projection.”

“Yes, she’s your projection.” She watched his eyes flicker closed for a moment.

“And our children. Everyone and everything I’ve ever encountered since LA.”

“I think so.” He looked at her across the table, his entire body so still he barely seemed to be breathing.

“How did you get here?”

Her past reared up inside her and her throat tightened as she bolted it back down.“When I realised I was dreaming, I– I realised I had to suppress anything I was projecting so I could see what was really happening.” Arthur’s eyes stayed on hers as she spoke, and the rush of relief she’d felt on seeing him welled up again. She wasn’t alone anymore; he’d help her figure it out and then this would all be over. “I was in a desert. Then my daughter–” She broke off and let the word wash through her. “My daughter was there, and she told me that this was Limbo, and I had to find you all so we could get back. So I walked until I found this house. And you.”

“How do you know I’m Arthur?” he asked calmly. “I could be a projection, too.”

“You’re not mine.” She kept her eyes on him. “I’m suppressing myself. And I haven’t seen you since LA, so my memory of you isn’t what I can see now. My imagination’s good, but…” She gave him a small, rueful smile. “If you’re someone else’s, you would probably have shot me the minute you knew I was here to stop the dream. The subconscious wants to survive, right? It wants to protect itself.” Arthur nodded with a faint tilt of his head. “If you are a projection, the person dreaming you knows, some how on some level that this is Limbo, just like I did. Maybe that’s why you didn’t hurt me, so you can help me find them. And you’ve seen me, so maybe they’ll know I’m here now, and start looking too. But you’re not a projection,” she continued. “This dream wants you to stay, just like mine did. It’s built from you, and it doesn’t want to be destroyed. The minute you started to question it, it fought back. Listen.” She stopped, and as if on cue thunder rolled again. “This happened in my dream too. My phone, my cell, my intercom, everything went at once. Then there was a huge storm. Then my family tried to stop me.”Arthur’s face tightened briefly, some raw emotion quickly being pushed aside. “You’re real, and this is your dream, Arthur. You made it. You can leave it.”

He looked away, and Ariadne let the quiet fall between them like snow in a forest. She'd said enough. Arthur wasn't Cobb, but he was a man who had invested in his own world, just like she had, and no matter how much she wanted him to be the person she'd always known, he had doubtless changed and been changed by being here. She clasped her hands in her lap and forced herself to be still. The light was dimming around them, the sky clouding over as she watched him.

Arthur sat for a long moment, then calmly reached out and touched her coffee cup with the tip of his finger. "The line between dreaming and lucid dreaming is in being aware of your state and knowing you have the capacity to alter what's happening around you." He spoke slowly, tracing lines down the sides of it. As she watched stripes of black faded in where he'd touched, blossoming from the white in thick bars. "You become the director of the scene, not just the spectator. You are no longer," he sat back, his eyes tightening as he looked at the cup, "passive."

Thunder rumbled again, shaking the house with a menacing tremble before breaking with a crack and a boom that made Arthur start, his face illuminated by the stab of lightning that flash bulbed through the windows in hard, shadow burning white. Then the rain hit the roof so hard it sounded like a shower of stones, pelting and pummeling in a furious rush.

“Shit,” Arthur muttered as he glanced upward. “It’s like the sky’s falling in. Shit," he repeated with venom. "We have to get out of here," he stood, grabbing his totem in his fist again. "I've made it unstable."

Ariadne pocketed her bishop, rising to her feet as Arthur bolted into the hall. "What are you doing?" She made to follow him just as he ran back in, an oversized backpack in both his hands.

"Supplies," he replied shortly.

"But won't they vanish when you suppress everything?"

"I know what I'm doing. Better that I bring it from my dream than try and create it in someone else's." He dropped the pack at his feet, undid the top and pulled out a metal wristwatch. He snapped it on to his arm, glancing at the face as he did so. "Fucking hell," his teeth bared as he dropped his hand at his side. "How can I have been so fucking stupid all this time? Shit!"

He took a steadying breath, then grasped her forearm. "Close your eyes," he ordered.

_(Outside the house she could hear the rising roar of a car engine barrelling towards the house, tyres lurching on the gravel as the vehicle was stopped with force. A door banged, then a woman's voice yelled desperately, "Arthur!")_

"Now, Ariadne," he insisted. _That must be her_ , Ariadne realised, _his Ariadne_. The look on Arthur's face as he looked at her was horrific; raw and angry, pleading and breaking, age marked and familiar. She turned her arm in his hold and grabbed his arm in turn, hoping her squeeze would be a small enough comfort to keep him from wavering.

_(Running feet towards the door, crunching and slipping. "Arthur! Arthur, please!" Hands banging the door, keys jangling, then the cold sweep of rain washed air rushing inside.)_

Ariadne squeezed her eyes shut. Arthur’s grip on her arm tightened, she heard him breathe in a long, slow draught of air just as she heard the woman cry out again, high and keening as a hunting bird; her desperate sprint towards them louder than the rain overhead. For an instant there was a motion of air by her face, something scraped down her left cheek with a sharp zip of pain—

Then she felt herself falling down while the rest of the world rushed upwards with a nauseating pull. There was a sickening moment of weightlessness, then the ground rushed up underneath them with a jarring thud. She felt Arthur stumble just as her own footing failed, and they both fell forward, tripping over the pack, losing their hold on each other and landing in a confusion of knees and elbows on a dry, solid surface beneath them.

~*~


	4. Chapter 4

~*~

She opened her eyes, blinking in the low light. It was dim, twilight maybe, as if the sun had just dipped below the horizon. She was on her stomach, lying on dense, ruddy brown earth that smelled cinnamon spiced and mineral dusty so close to her face. Arthur groaned faintly, and when she turned her head he was sprawled next to her, making a pained face. “I’m too old for hard landings,” he said and smiled half heartedly at her. As he caught sight of her, it suddenly wiped away. He reached out, putting his fingers on her cheek, and as he did so a sparkle of pain made her flinch back.

“Sorry.” He pulled his hand away, but not before she saw the blood on his skin.

“What happened?” She fumbled at the hurt, pressing at it, wincing when it stung.

Arthur sat up and rummaged in the pack, producing a first aid kit. Ariadne rolled herself over, trying to ignore the aches mapping her body, and pulled herself to a sitting position facing him.

“Here.” Arthur leant across and began to wipe her cheek, steadying her jaw with his other hand. The sterile wipe stung, and she hissed in discomfort. “It’s OK,” he murmured, “just a scratch.”

“What did it?”

Arthur’s face shuttered. “My wife,” he said carefully, pressing a dry pad of gauze to her face. “Hold that there.”

She complied, watching him stow the kit away and begin unpacking another set of things— a flashlight, a block of firelighters, and what looked like a key and a small saw attached by a thick cord. She wanted to ask a million questions about his life, his work, his home, his family since he had left LA but she didn’t dare to. It took all her willpower to hold back her thoughts of her life in Paris, and while Arthur was the more experienced dreamer and had been the one to teach her how to suppress her projections, making it look easier than walking at the time, she didn’t want to test his abilities. Or have her own tested by reacting in sympathy, she thought, and gently pulled herself back from the temptation of asking anything personal.

Instead she made herself look at the landscape around them. Despite the low light it appeared they were in a circular clearing surrounded by a forest, and where they’d landed was an exposed patch of ground at it’s centre. Around them grass grew in domed tussocks, wiry spikes of it shooting up into long, thick stems in the centre of each clump. There was no sound, save of the trees creaking as the temperature fell. No insects, birds or animals stirred or called out. When she looked up the sky was fading into inky blue, and more stars than she had ever seen twinkled extravagantly back from the infinity beyond.

“We can’t do much in the dark.” Arthur’s voice brought her back down to earth. He clicked on the flashlight and began casting it around, lighting up the grass and trees in bleached white slices. “I’ll find some wood, then we can have a fire. It’ll keep us warm, and keep away anything wild that lives out here. Not that there seems to be anything,” he added dubiously.

“Your dream was like this, for me,” Ariadne said. “First it was a desert. Then a plain, some mountains. But no animals, no people, just plants.”

Arthur cast around again. “Perhaps this is the edge of a dream, then. A dreamer tends to make an entire environment immediately, but populating it occurs as they spend more time in it and experience more of it. It’s likely that there’s nothing more than plants here because their projections haven’t reached this far, or they’ve simply filled the space with something as a kind of border and not given it much thought, except for the fact that there are trees.”

“Like areas marked unexplored on a map?”

“Precisely.” Arthur glanced around again. “It’s also completely possible that when a dreamer has no idea of what animal life might exist in a particular place that nothing would be manifested. Not a thing,” he finished slowly.

Ariadne scrambled to her feet, shaking off the eerie feeling that the silence around them was creating. “Come on, I’ll help you find some wood. We can start a fire, then we need to decide on our next step.”

~*~

“Were you a boy scout?”

Ariadne sat crosslegged on the sleeping mat Arthur had unrolled for her, watching him stir the soup he was heating in a ration tin. They’d found wood, after making a few tight circuits of the clearing, then water when Arthur had slipped down the shallow bank of a stream that ran at its edge, wetting his feet and making him swear so sharply Ariadne had momentarily terrified herself into thinking he had been attacked. Once Arthur had squelched back to their camp spot he lit the fire with key and saw, which he explained was actually a flint and steel, feeding it with dry grass, twigs, then a firelighter so it flared up and began to burn in earnest. He had taken a water bottle, filled it and once he was back, sat down and peeled off his socks and shoes, letting them sit and toast on the ring of stones he’d built the fire inside.

Arthur glanced up and grinned in the firelight. “Eagle scout,” he corrected her, adding some more logs to the campfire for the flames to gnaw on. “Where do you think I learned my planning skills? Rule one: Be prepared.”

“So, what do your Eagle Scout skills have to say about this situation?” She tried to sound lighthearted, but Arthur’s smile evaporated all the same, and he sighed.

“What I know about Limbo, I’ve learned from other people. Cobb mostly, and he was never very forthcoming on the subject, as you can probably imagine.” Arthur kept his attention on the soup as he spoke. “This scenario isn’t one I’ve heard of before, so I would have to speculate.”

“And what would you speculate, if you had to?” Ariadne pressed.

“I would guess that we have constructed individual, perhaps overlapping, dreams because the space we’re in is able to accommodate and adapt to multiple manipulations. I think that we started here together, as a group. You and Cobb probably created the initial environment, because of all of us you are the ones who are the most skilled and the most able to direct your unconscious in that direction. As we separated and physically moved further apart, we each of us began to construct things around us. We existed in our own world bubbles, if you like. We managed to dream and project simultaneously inside them.”

“Until now,” Ariadne put in. The fire hissed as she paused, staring at the flames. “You called Limbo raw and infinite when I asked before, but I don’t think it’s that. Raw, maybe,” she picked up a pinch of dirt in her fingers and crumbled it to dust as she spoke. “But also the point where brain function is so accelerated and time so dilated that it appears infinite, because we have both the space and the time to create huge, detailed dreams without a great amount of effort.” She looked up and caught him watching her intently.

“Go on,” Arthur nodded when she stopped again.

“When I first dreamed with Cobb, he mentioned the idea of creation and discovery happening in parallel. Limbo would speed that process up, perhaps past the point of conscious exertion: we would be able to create fast enough and with so little effort that it would be simultaneous with our experience, and we wouldn’t perceive it as having the qualities of a dream.”

“It makes sense.” Arthur tapped the spoon on the side of the tin then began to pour out the soup. “A normal dream is restricted by two things: The subject’s projections, who try to home in on the dreamer and react to any changes by doing so faster; and the dreamer’s ability to fill the space during the time in which they are exposed to Somnacin. The rule of thumb is the lower the level of the dream, the more time dilates,”

“Right.” Ariadne nodded. “So the more time you have, the more you can do.” He handed her a mug and she accepted it gratefully, taking a sip. The soup was savoury and thick, the taste of sage and chicken filling her mouth and making her recall just how long it had been since she’d had food. “This is delicious, thank you.” She remembered her manners right before she took another sip.

“You’re welcome.” Arthur inclined his head with a half smile. He was watching her keenly in the firelight as he carried on. “Actually, it’s a case of the more we can remember to put there. A dreamer recalls the environment from what they’ve been taught, and memory is a case of rebuilding, layering up rather than having it saved in our heads as a complete image or idea.”

“So these environments, our dreams, are us part recalling, part building what we expect to find? Wouldn’t we have noticed that? I mean, why we haven’t noticed until now?”

Arthur half smiled. “I think it’s like a familiar room you have your back to. You know that the space is there. You might even recall broadly how it looks. But you don’t need to see it or to be constantly aware of it for it to exist. If something feels enough like reality, if you want it to be reality enough, you’ll treat any inconsistencies like the room behind you. They exist, but you discount them because you’re choosing to face the other way. After a while you forget how things should be because so much time has passed without you seeing them in any way except the way you want them. Or the way you think they are,” he said, and his eyes met hers across the fire, studying her face. “I think that’s why you realised first, out of all of us, that something wasn’t right, and why your daughter told you what she did.”

“Why do you think that?”

Arthur sat still for a moment, taking her in. “It was your work. You were the one who made the dreams credible, you gave them enough substance by noticing the minutiae, giving them weight and fabric, remembering the quality they needed to convince a dreamer. Even when it wasn’t your job, you always saw the details that we chose to look away from. I think eventually, subconsciously, you remembered enough that you couldn’t ignore it any longer.”

Ariadne shook her head. “I didn’t remember though. I forgot. I forgot so much, so easily.”

“But you knew me, when you saw me. I don’t look like I did twenty five years ago, but you still remembered me. I’m not sure I could recognise someone I hadn’t seen for that long without some kind of reference. And even then,” he said softly, “I’m not sure if I could recall them as they are really. I would have an idea, but—” He squinted at her, smiling to himself.

“What?” She wanted to squirm under his scrutiny.

“You— Well, you’re not quite like my—” He caught himself. “My memories.”

“I’ve got older, Arthur, and so have you.” She raised her eyebrows at him over the rim of her mug.

“It’s not just that. Your hair—”

“Has got grey in it?”

“—it’s not quite so curly as I used to think,” he finished pointedly. “You do have grey, but not a great deal. You’re a little taller than I remember. You move your hands when you talk about something you’re really concentrating on. It feels like I’m having to get to know you again, because my idea of you, and you aren’t the same.”

He looked at her for a while, head on one side, and Ariadne felt herself blushing in spite of herself.

“Don’t do that,” she looked down at the fire.

“What?” Arthur asked.

“Stare at me,” she mumbled, “it’s like,” she fumbled as her brain blared like you’re comparing me with your Ariadne! “like I’m a specimen or something.” She finished weakly.

“OK,” Arthur stood up, and she heard him walk around the fire, then he sat down next to her. “Now we’re both facing the same way.” He said reasonably. “You’re not how I remember though. You’re much more- you’re more yourself. Even though there’s a sadness I can see, that I don’t think was there before.”

The fire spat and crackled in the pause. Ariadne looked at the sparks flying off it, sailing into the dark before they faded out. “Today I lost my family. They weren’t real, but I loved them so much; I can’t even think about them, because if I do my suppressing them will break down.” She heard her voice come from the hollow space in her chest. Why did it hurt, when it hadn’t been real? She was sick of the unreal, the whole world around her being nothing more than pretty shapes and illusions to distract and befuddle anyone who fell into them.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said quietly. “You mentioned you had a daughter.”

Aisling, the word thumped in Ariadne’s head like a hammer blow, and she screwed down her memories tight. “I can’t talk about it, or it’ll fall apart, and I can’t let that happen. I just don’t want to feel like I’m the only real thing here anymore.” She felt her lips go numbly around the words.

“I’m here,” Arthur replied. “I’m real, and I can help, if you want.” His offer was calm, and she reached out and clung onto it, like a drowning sailor lashing themselves to the mast of a sinking ship. “What can I do?” He said gently.

“Can I touch you?” She said before she could stop herself.

Arthur moved closer, letting their knees bump. “Like this?”

“No, I was thinking,” she felt the yawning cold void in her chest try to open again, and she pushed it away. Go towards what’s real, she urged herself.  “More like this.”

She turned her head, and her lips brushed his cheek, mouthing a kiss onto his skin. Her hands smoothed down his back, a touch that she was trying to rationalise as comfort, support, even friendship but inside herself she felt the flicker of desire, that ember of old, remembered emotions glowing brighter with every passing second.

Arthur’s hand worked softly into her hair, combing it with a gentle motion. He pressed a kiss onto her jaw, then another by her chin, then a third at the corner of her mouth before he hesitated. Ariadne let out the knot of anxiety that had caught under her ribs in a long, shaky breath. All of the kisses she’d had since his in the hotel, right up until the one he’d caught her with today, had been with Lance. Her false husband, her puppet spouse, a man whom she had almost never seemed to need to say anything to, because he had always seemed to know what she wanted, because of course he would. Arthur wasn’t a projection. He was real, flesh and blood and entirely self determining and unpredictable. Was he thinking of his wife, his Ariadne, a woman made out of his own want for her as she was all that time ago? Or was he asking for her, the complicated, shifting and brutal self that he couldn’t predict?

It all rushed through her head, the life she’d had, the life she could have had, all of it no more real that painted paper and reciting lines written in a script; she’d loved and fought and been happy in it, and it hurt, it hurt as if nothing would ever replace the feeling, and she would never trust her reality again because of it. She wanted it to leave her, even if just for a moment, to stop having to try to be strong and push it away and just be without it instead, to feel something else and remind herself that she was more than the loss and the lies.

“Arthur.” She said his name to his skin, tracing the shape of the words on him as she might have drawn their initials on a condensation fogged window, wrapped in a heart and pierced by an arrow. Love and pain, always bound together. She felt him shiver, his fingertips tracing her collarbone hesitated and his breath came out in a shudder.

“Ariadne,” he replied in a low voice. “Ariadne,” he said to the corner of her mouth, his tongue catching around the i and the d before rolling the e past his lips in a sigh of sound. She remembered the first time he’d touched her, hands on her skin, gripping her wrist, making her believe she was safe, real and well in spite of the pain radiating from her guts. He had offered himself to her as a sign she wasn’t dreaming, and somehow she realised that long before she had her bishop, she had had him.

She turned her head a little, and her mouth touched his. For a fraction of time it was just lips against lips, warm skin on warm skin, nothing but their breath passing between them. Then she raised her hand, cradled the back of his head and let herself kiss him, as she had wanted to all that time ago and really all that time since. Arthur made a soft noise in his throat, somewhere between an ah and an oh, and his hand slid down her ribcage, over the swell of her breasts and around her waist, pulling her closer to him. One kiss blurred into another, then another; each one a sweet silver shiver of pleasure running down her spine, the touch of his hands, first soothing were now exploring, drawing a new map of her body with his fingertips and mouth. There was nothing in her head now but this, his body, his touch, his smell and his sounds, burning out the drag of the past, with all it’s tendrils of guilt and sorrow, and the pull of the future, where nothing but uncertainty loomed in an amorphous grey cloud. She wanted nothing now but just to be.

She shifted back in his grasp, and his hands hesitated. “Are you—” he started, but she sealed her lips over his, devouring his words before he could ask and taking him down onto the mat with her, letting his body slide against hers as they lay side by side. “Don’t stop,” she whispered into his mouth. “I want—” she finished in a soft moan as he started to undo her shirt buttons with fumbling fingers. She pulled his left leg towards her, urging it between her thighs so she was astride him, and struggled with her shirt, yanking her right arm free so the fabric fell beneath her then looping her arm around him, fisting her hand in his sweater as she started to rock her pelvis into his. Arthur trailed his hand over her bare skin, from her shoulders, down her spine, over her hip, then up her ribs in urgent, hungry strokes, doubling back on himself then redrawing his lines, up and over, across and around. He hesitated again just before he cupped her breast, but Ariadne pushed herself into his palm, feeling the heat and pressure through her bra as he curled his fingers around her, his thumb stroking back and forth across the fabric over her nipple as she felt her back arch at the sensation.

“Take it off,” she demanded in a rough voice as his mouth dawdled away from her mouth and down her neck.

“Take what off?” Arthur breathed, punctuating his words with small kisses.

“All of it,” she ground into the hard muscle of his thigh, grasping his ass and pulling him closer.

“Say please,” Arthur whispered. “Say 'Arthur, undress me.'”

“Fuck,” she hissed through her teeth as he sucked the sensitive spot below her ear. “Please, Arthur. Just fucking undress me. Undress yourself. I don’t care, just take some clothes off one of us.”

Her bra loosened with a sudden flick, then he was pulling it away. For an instant she wanted to cover herself back up; having carried and nursed two children meant she didn’t have the body she’d had at twenty three, and a shard of embarrassment knifed her in the midst of her arousal. But Arthur’s hand went straight to her breasts, and the sensation overtook her as he dipped his head, his tongue and lips describing the shape of her collarbone as his thumb rolled her nipple around and around and around in an endless circle. “Oh god,” she hissed, yanking at his sweater and the shirt underneath, pulling it up in messy handfuls as her body shivered and sparked against him. Her hand finally felt skin, then she was burrowing under his layers, stroking and squeezing, making circles and lines over his back and across his stomach, counting his ribs as his breathing stuttered. “Take it off, take it off, take it off,” she chanted between her own erratic inhales. Arthur groaned and peeled himself away from her, pulling her head down for an impatient, messy kiss; her mouth opened against his and she dragged him closer by his shirt collar, pushing down into his lap and rubbing against his erection until he was making desperate sounds from his chest.

“Off,” she gasped, when they broke off to breathe. “Take your clothes off. I want to feel you and I want to do it now."

"I forgot how damn demanding you are," Arthur murmured, his smile equal parts amused and downright sinful. Ariadne grabbed his belt buckle and yanked the tongue free, ignoring his startled grunt and giving him a sharp smile of her own. “You do it, or I will, and that will take far longer than if you do it yourself.”

Arthur’s hand pushed hers away, his mouth taking hers back as they sat up, untangling their legs and bodies until they were joined only at the lips. Ariadne shook her shirt away, peeled off her bra and dropped it. Arthur’s belt clinked undone and there was a soft pop of buttons unfastening. She pulled away from their kiss at the same moment he did, and with barely a pause she undid her slacks, wriggling them down her legs as Arthur yanked his sweater off, further mussing his hair in the process, then his pants in a slightly less slick motion. He started on his shirt buttons just as she made to take off her panties.

“No, leave them.” Arthur was looking at her, taking in every inch of her as she watched him. "I want to do that," he murmured as he shrugged his shirt away, leaving him in just a pair of briefs, but before she could enjoy the sight he turned his body towards her, bent down and putting his hands either side of her on the mat, dipped his head and wrapped his lips around her right nipple.

“Oh, shit,” she breathed. His mouth widened against her breast, suckling her and stroking his tongue in the same circle he’d described with his thumb. She let herself relax back, taking him with her as she lay down, her hands rising to hold his head then to slide down his body again, taking her time to trace around his small, flat nipples in the same circle as he lifted his head and lavished attention on her other breast. She let herself sink into the feeling, the warmth of him against and around her; the pressure and the pleasure of his touch, the vibrations of his groans as she hummed and moaned in counterpoint. Real, she told herself, this is real and we are real.

One of his hands slid down her side, stopping on her thigh. He sighed into her, stroking over the skin as she let her legs part. He worked carefully up and down, from the outside to the inside of her leg in slow strokes, coming agonisingly close to her pussy then moving away again, over and over in a near maddening touch. She pushed her hips up, trying to make him come closer, but Arthur made an amused sound and moved away again. “Please,” she fumbled to grab his arm from underneath, but Arthur lifted his head, leaned back and moved out of her grasp.

“I’m enjoying you,” he murmured, leaning back in to kiss her with a hunger that she wished was in his hands. “I want to savour you,” he added as she looped her arms around his neck and wriggled her side into his body, pressing and rocking her hip against his cock before she let her hand trail down and wrap around him. His eyes fluttered closed as she began to stroke him, feeling him thicken in her grasp.

“Touch me,” she replied, bringing his mouth back down to hers. Arthur moaned against her as they kissed again, and when his hand ran up her thigh again he didn’t stop. His fingers dawdled over her panties, making the same loops he’d drawn on her breasts, gentle then with increasing pressure as she pushed up towards him, until he found the spot that made her arch and gasp and him jump and twitch in her hand in response.

He kept working her, stroking then circling over her covered pussy. Ariadne tried her best to copy him, varying her strokes around him as his hips moved against her and she pressed up to meet him, her body greedy for more sensation, more touch even as he gave it to her. She could feel her wetness and the steady pulse of her clit, and the demand inside her was only getting stronger with every brush of his fingers. Arthur was bucking into her hand, and all she could think of now was having him.

Somehow she managed to wrench her mouth from his. “I want you inside me,” she ground out into the space between them. “Now,” she added for good measure when Arthur made to kiss her again.

“How?” He kept on stroking her, smiling his filthy, flirty smile. “You want me on top? Behind you? Standing up against a tree?”

"Lying down. On your back." Her moan turned into a gasp as Arthur’s smile widened, then his arms wrapped around her and he rolled them over, letting her sprawl across him. His hands closed on her hips, thumbs hooking into the waistband of her panties.

“Can I take these off now?”

“Yeah.” She sat up, and tugged at the waist of his briefs in turn. “You, too.” Arthur groaned when she rolled her hips over him, but he didn’t hesitate. As soon as he had managed to pull her underwear away, he lifted his hips, wiggled out of his own and before he could make another move Ariadne was back in his lap, her hand wrapped around his cock and her thumb stroking the tip, working the moisture that was coming from him around the smooth head before working him up and down. Arthur fell back on his elbows, watching her as she watched him, his lips parted and his eyes half closed as she rose up on her knees, holding him in her fist as she guided him inside her.

The first touch of him against her made her want to groan his name. As she sank down over him, feeling him move into her sent shivers up and down her spine. He was tense beneath her, holding himself back as she came down, lower and lower, inch by inch until she was flush against him. Her hands braced on his chest as she let her body get used to his, tensing and releasing around him until she felt his hips push up in a short, involuntarily thrust. "Oh god," she heard herself say in a hoarse voice as her head rolled back and Arthur pushed up again, harder this time. She moved with him, rolling her hips back until he was almost free of her again then sliding back, tightening around him as she went.

“Oh shit, Ariadne.” Arthur’s skin was flushed in the firelight, his hands grasping her hips so hard it was almost painful, but even that was welcome. She pulled back again, a little faster this time, and Arthur moaned out loud.

“Do you like this?” she panted as she sped up a fraction more.

“Uhuh.” Arthur’s head rolled back, his face going tight. “Don’t stop, Ariadne; don’t stop,” he begged as she began to rise and fall over him as fast as her hips and thighs would let her, the shaking tension in them making her feel more desperate by the second. She felt her head loll back again, her eyes closing as she grabbed his thighs for balance, letting the fullness and sensations feed the desperation that had been chasing her.

“Look at me.” Arthur’s hand cupped her face. “Don’t look away. Look at me, Ariadne,” he pleaded in a thick voice. “I want to see you.” He broke off in another groan as she arched over him. His eyes met hers as his fingers spread over her breasts again, teasing her nipples until the arrows of pleasure had her slamming her hips down as his thrust up to meet her. His mouth was agape as he watched her, his face so familiar even as it had changed, it made her want to never look away again. How much had she denied herself this moment, that it took so long to reach it?

“Arthur,” she gasped in a strange, high voice; her body was tensing even as her mind was unravelling, and she pressed herself down again, and again, she was so damn close she could almost taste it, the heavy pulse between her thighs, the heat in her belly. She pressed her fingers over her clit desperate to take herself over, when Arthur's hand tangled with hers, his fingers on her as his other hand clasped her cheek.

"Look at me." He sounded high pitched and as desperate as she felt, "Ariadne, please."  Her mind was stuttering as she looked down at him, holding her eyes open as she felt her body begin to coil up.

“Arthur,” she stuttered his name out, “Arthur, I’m- I- oh!” His fingers flicked over her just as she let go, squeezing him tight in her grasp as her entire self shook in a orgasm so intense she felt right to the soles of her feet.

Arthur rose and fell with her, letting her come down as he rode out her orgasm. When she could breathe normally again she leaned forward, feeling him rise with her, and kissed him. “You need more,” she murmured; a statement, not a question.

“Just a little,” he admitted softly. “Just a little bit more.” His hands slipped around her hips again as she began to move. His pace picked up, and she drove herself to match it, the small aftershocks of her orgasm growing as she did so even, as she made herself focus on his release. “Arthur,” she said, watching his arms and neck tighten as his motion beneath her grew more uneven and desperate.

“Oh, god, Ariadne,” he managed between breaths, his eyes fixed on hers. “Ariadne, Ariadne.” The chant broke as he made a loud, nearly feral noise, his hips arched up and stuttered against hers, his body hot and sweat sheened as he fell back, taking her with him, urging her to lay on his chest as he panted, grinned, then inhaled a long, deep breath before kissing her forehead and putting his arms loosely around her.

“That was amazing, even if I do say so myself." He sounded so matter of fact. Ariadne let herself drift, wrapping herself tightly in the experience she’d just had. She was kept expecting herself to feel shame or disgust, as if she’d just committed adultery both as and against herself.

“You’re OK,” Arthur said calmly. “We both are,” he added when she propped herself up and looked at him. “It was physical, and we needed it.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, and then on an impulse, leaned forward and kissed him again. Perhaps it's a test, she reasoned to herself, feeling some small part of her prickle with cold as he hesitated against her, making sure of— what? The idea broke off as his mouth softened, his hands clasped her back and his body rolled gently under hers.

“We need to sleep,” he mock protested as they parted, then contradicted himself by kissing her himself. “Really, we should sleep.” He groped around by his head, and dragged a sleeping bag onto the mat. Ariadne stared at it, then at him, then at it again.

“Is there anything you don’t have in that pack? I’m starting to think you’re related to Mary Poppins.”

“It’s a similar principle,” he started, only stopping when Ariadne raised her eyebrows at him in disbelief. “Come on,” he urged her up to sitting, undid the sleeping bag and spread it out. He picked up her panties and his sweater, offering them to her before slipping on his shirt and briefs back on. He bundled the rest of their clothes into a loose pillow then climbed into the sleeping bag, holding the side open as she lay down next to him and fumbled the zip closed.

His body shifted to bracket hers, her back to his front. They lay still for a moment; Ariadne could hear the fire hiss softly and feel him breathing against her. “The worst moment is always the one before you fell asleep, when your head is empty and everything comes back.” Arthur’s arm curled around her, and she found herself taking his hand against her chest, moving back so they were in closer contact.

“I don’t want to close my eyes and find out that I’m back there,” she admitted suddenly into the stillness. “I don’t want to wake up and have this have been wrong, or have to suppress them and find you all over again.”

“That won’t happen,” Arthur replied gently against her hair. “I’m here, and I’ll find you if you get lost.”

“I loved them.” Her throat tightened into a hard knot. “They were my illusion, but I loved them all the same.”

“I know.” Arthur brought her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss on her palm before resting it  against his face. “I loved my family, too.” He tightened his arm around her. “Sleep. You’re exhausted. I’ll be here, OK? You’ll wake up, and I’ll be here."

Ariadne nodded and closed her eyes, willing herself to relax. “Count your breaths,” Arthur said quietly. “One breath is one inhale followed by one exhale. When you’re relaxed you breathe about fifteen times a minute. It takes about eight minutes to fall asleep.” He kissed her palm again, then took her hand back to relax on her chest. “That’s a hundred and twenty breaths between you and sleep.”

Her chest rose under their hands as he spoke. “One,” he began.

She counted with him, and as she slipped into sleep she clutched the sound of his voice to her. Her clue, woven in between her fingers like her namesake’s thread.

~*~


	5. Chapter 5

~*~

It was the sound of Arthur's voice that woke her.

 

"OK." He was speaking slowly and with measured calm. "I'm not armed. Let me raise my hands and show you." She felt him move, a gradual shift of his arms from around her and she stirred.  There was a burst of angry voices, speaking too fast in a strong accent that she couldn’t decipher in her just roused state.

“No!” Arthur snapped. “Don’t touch her! She isn’t armed either. Ariadne,” he lowered his voice, “you need to open your eyes and raise your hands. Don’t do or say anything else.”

She cautiously cracked open her eyelids, resisting the urge to screw them up against the daylight. Their clearing was now ringed with a group of men dressed in a dark green coveralls and heavy boots. They were all ruddy cheeked and tanned, as if they spent their entire lives working outdoors, and they all had dark hair cut to the same short length. They were all looking at Arthur and herself, and all of them were pointing the same sleek, black, long barrelled gun right at them. A cold flood of fear ran down her back, the only thought in her head a tight, panicked loop of _ohshitohshitohshit_. Very, very cautiously she raised her hands from the sleeping bag and held them by her head.

 

“We were hiking, and we got lost in the forest.” Arthur spoke again from behind her. There was a snort, followed by a crunch of footsteps and an older man with streaks of grey in his hair and lines around his eyes came into her eyeline and bent down to inspect her.

“I am the commander of this troop, and we take care of the land here. Tell me, are you American?” His English had an accent she couldn’t quite place; it lept from French, through Italian to what she thought might have been Greek, then almost became British before veering off again.

“Yes,” she replied with calm she definitely did not feel.

“You got lost?” He tilted his head to one side and frowned.

“We were hiking. It was dark and we lost the trail.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then slapped his hands on his thighs and grinned. “You are both lying. There are no paths in these forests. No one comes here for a little hike and a jolly campfire.” His eyebrows waggled as he laced his words with innuendo, flicking his gaze up and down them in their sleeping bag. “Get up. We are taking you to the manor. You can tell the boss all about your little hike, and see if he believes you.”

 

“We need to get dressed,” Ariadne shot back.

“But of course,” the commander replied smoothly. He gestured towards Arthur’s pack, and one of the men stepped forward and removed it. “Face out,” he barked, and the troop of men all turned their backs with a crisp stamp as they stopped. “Now, I will turn my back as well. You are outnumbered, outgunned and, if your friend is being truthful, in no position to challenge us whatsoever. Still, I would advise against any acts of chivalry or heroism from either of you. When you are dressed, say and I will turn around.” He nodded politely, then took his place, facing away from them on the other side of their campfire.

They dressed hurriedly, without speaking. As they finished, Arthur caught her hand, making her turn towards him. He reached out and cupped her face for a moment, his thumb stroking over her cheekbone as he gave her his familiar, subtle smile; trying to reassure her, she thought. She nodded back, covering his hand for a second and managing a small smile of her own. At that he briefly let their fingers interlace, then let go.

 

“We’re ready,” he said, keeping his eyes on hers.

“Wonderful,” the commander replied cheerfully, and clapped a firm hand on both their shoulders to turn them towards him. “Come, it is time for us take you to the manor. But before we go, forgive me, this is a necessary measure.” He waved one of his men over. “Hands out, please.”

Ariadne hesitated, her body tensing. “Only for a short while, I promise madame.” The man’s grip increased a fraction. “The alternative is that we tie you up, and that will be uncomfortable. You don’t want that, eh? Come now, your friend is OK with it.” He took the cuffs his subordinate was holding out. Ariadne tried to catch Arthur in the edge of her vision, but all she could see was his hands, held forward from his body as the man snapped the cuffs around his wrists, making the chain jangle. If Arthur was submitting, what choice did she have? She put out her hands, and the man’s smile was cheerful again.

 

“See, you can trust us.” The cuffs wrapped around her arms in cold, inflexible circles as he spoke. “There, you can relax. We’ll take a nice walk, then a nice drive, then all shall be well.” He patted her shoulder again, then turned back to his men, his back straightening. “Form up!”

 

The circle of men surrounded them, rearranging into pairs, two in front of them, two behind, one of whom had strapped on Arthur’s pack, and one either side. The man took the lead, and as a tight knot they marched into the forest.

 

The walk seemed to be hours long, but Ariadne reasoned with herself it must have been only three quarters of one at most. With little else to do but follow and comply, unable to talk or even glance towards Arthur without breaking her stride, instead she set herself to observe their route and note every detail she could.

 

The trail they took was freshly cut, branches had been chopped away to stumps of new white wood and the ferns and moss on the ground were still green where they’d been crushed underfoot. The trees were old, thick and tall, their deeply ridged bark smeared with daubs of lichen; their huge canopies only letting through dappled mosaics of sunlight that scattered and shifted on the dead leaves that carpeted the ground beneath them. The ground undulated gently, rising and falling as they walked, and all the time she was aware of the sound of running water, the stream they had found the night before babbling along beside them, a constant thread of sound that followed them as they moved.

 

Eventually the trees started to thin, old stumps indicating that someone had cleared part of the forest some time before. Patches of sky appeared above them, blue as cornflowers with soft, white fluffy clouds floating across them, unhurried and stately as swans; a perfect, picture book day. Their pace slowed, and up ahead Ariadne saw an open space, sliced so cleanly into the forest the trees seemed to be growing in straight lines either side. A van was parked in its centre, dark blue, with tinted glass in its windows; jarring in the wilderness around it. As they reached it, Ariadne saw that road had been laid, burrowing into the forest, splitting it into two halves. The van was parked right in the middle of the narrow asphalt strip, shiny as a squatting beetle, left with confidence that no one else would dare use the road and need to pass.

 

The two men in front of them opened the rear doors, then jumped inside a clatter of boots. She could see two rows of seats down either side, and a bench seat at the far end in front of the cab. “In we go.”

 

The man prodded her forwards, so she clambered up, then was calmly but firmly pressed into a seat between the first two men. Two more men joined them in the opposite row, then Arthur was put in between them, facing her. He rested his hands in his lap, his face set in a neutral expression, the model of calm compliance. The only change she could see in him since earlier was a cuff of dirt around the hem of his pants. He looked at her, and his expression warmed with one of his characteristic subtle shifts. He ran his eyes over her, checking her face to make sure she was OK, then her body, then returning to her face. She wished for a second she was telepathic, instead having to settle for another small smile to broadcast that she was fine.

 

Once the rest of the troop had climbed aboard the commander took his seat with his back to the cab, tapped the back of the driver’s seat and then relaxed, unwrapping a stick of gum and popping it in his mouth, chewing and humming to himself as the van made a neat turn and smoothly began to speed down the road. When he caught her glancing at him, the man smiled widely.

 

“You’re worried, madame?” Ariadne risked a look at Arthur, who gave her the tiniest nod in return. God, she’d pay all she had to know if he had a plan, what it was and if she was about to screw it up. But forewarned is forearmed, she thought, and if she could pry anything from this man it might be of use.

“A little. What is he like, your boss?”

“ _The_ boss,” the man corrected her, making sure to stress the definite article. “He’s a nice man. A smart man,” he added as he tapped his head for emphasis. “A fair man. Everyone knows he does what he can to see everyone is happy and taken good care of.” A ripple of laughter ran through the troop as the man smiled again, a sly, knowing tilt of his lips that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

“Is he from here?” Ariadne fished.

“Of course!” The man made a face indicating how stupid a question that was. "We are all from here. I myself was born on the manor estate, but my friends here? They are all from the valley, or else from the mountains. We don’t stray too far from where we know we can have a good living, heh? Another swell of laughter rose, knowing grins passed between the men around her.

“What is it that he does?” The man’s eyes narrowed at this, his jovial air chilling down several degrees.

“You’re very curious about him, madame. Are you perhaps hoping to trade up from your current bed warmer? Hey!” He poked Arthur’s ankle with the toe of his boot to get his attention. “You need to watch yourself, my friend. Your little lady is not the loyal type, I think. Like a butterfly, fluttering from pretty flower to pretty flower, moving on when she’s taken her fill. Or else you are very dull and cannot keep her happy, which is a shame for you, but better news for the boss, heh?” Arthur’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened a fraction, but he said nothing as the men around him sniggered.

When he failed to respond the man leaned forward, elbows on his knees and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Perhaps you need some of those little blue pills, my friend. Maybe then you would have better luck with this beauty.” He glanced at Ariadne, then nudged at Arthur’s leg  again, winking lewdly. “You should try that, if she comes back to you after the boss has had some fun with her.”

 

Ariadne felt her gut tighten. She knew what he was implying, and she wanted to vomit at the thought. What were her options? Begging would probably bring more amusement or the semblance of pity. Trying to get away would be fruitless or get her killed. Screaming would likely just lead to a gag. She would have to wait, and if anything happened she would have to rely on soiling herself to deter them.

Arthur didn’t move.

“Or is it that you are just not enough of a man to satisfy her?” The man carried on. “I heard that in America you can have an operation now. They suck the fat out of your ass and inject into your dick.” Some of the troop winced and sucked in their breath as others snorted in amusement. “You have a great, big, fat cock, and every woman is happy to see you. Even an old man like you. Your lovely lady, she would never look at anyone else. She would go down on her knees every single hour for you and suck you d—”

Arthur’s head  suddenly snapped towards the man, his lip curled, as he spat out: “She is not my lady.”

The man’s eyes widened with mock surprise and he looked back at Arthur. “Isn’t she?” Arthur looked across at her, his face still cold and still. Then he shook his head.

 

“No,” he said with finality.

Ariadne felt herself go rigid. _This is trash talk. They’re trying to rattle you_. She clenched her hands together. _Let it go and stay calm. Why are you surprised anyway?_ She sneered at herself. _What do you think this is? One fuck and he’s yours forever? It was physical. Or do you want him to protect you like some kind of princess, sticking claim on you and fighting for your virtue?_

 

“No, I’m not.” She tried to sneer, but given how the man smirked at her she must have done a poor job.

 

“Well, well, well.” He raked his gaze over her, this time appraisingly, as if she were a car he was considering buying. When he reached her face, he grinned again. “Oh dear. I don’t think she knew that my friend, no matter what she says. Oh dear, oh dear.” He shook his head and sat back in his seat, looking from her to him and back again, smiling to himself and snapping his gum.

After a few moments of silence, he started to hum.

 

~*~

 

The van glided to a stop after a drive at least twice as long as their walk. It had been on the flat right until the very end, when for the last half an hour or so they climbed up a steep slope that curved back and forth, buffeting her into the two men either side of her no matter how still she tried to hold herself.

There had been no more talk. The commander had hummed his merry tune all the way, and the men had sat in perfect silence, watching the world go by the windows. She and Arthur had looked at each other. She told herself that he was wearing his professional exterior, the smooth, polished and careful neutral designed to give nothing away except in the smallest movements. He couldn’t speak, and he couldn’t move, but she could see he was putting on his old persona again. The point man was looking back at her, evaluating, examining and extrapolating. The snap had let it slip, but now he was back in control. She didn’t know if what she felt was hope and relief, blind faith in the certainty that Arthur was somehow going to get them out of this, or her own drawing up into herself as the architect, the gathering of the resources she would need to take care of herself.

The doors of the van were opened, and they were ushered out onto a gravel driveway bathed in bright sunlight.  For a moment she almost forgot that she was a prisoner, and the anxiety was swamped by her critical eye taking over and pulling out every detail she could find.

They were in front of a truly enormous house, that sprawled out before them in honey coloured sandstone. The front divided into two wings which jutted away from the main house at wide angle so it almost appeared curved. There were at least three floors looking over them, the windows large and clear in their carved frames. Over bright, white double front door was detailed coat of arms, clean and meticulously made in a sharp relief. A sleek pair of leopards, their spots shaded in by a careful chisel, held a shield between them. The shield itself divided horizontally with a line of flames that reached upwards towards its top; broken in the centre by an open flower with a pair of leaves, and below it a broken spear. She glanced at Arthur, and found he was looking at it too, except the expression on his face was less curious and closer to mutinous.

“Come, come, come.” The commander chivvied them with a wave of his hands towards the front door, flanked by two of the troop. He knocked and the door opened, to reveal a tall, young, blond man who was dressed in a tail coat and a stiff white shirt. The young man looked them all over from down the end of his nose, but the commander simply clapped his shoulder and said cheerfully.

“Where’s the boss?”

“His Lordship is in the morning room,” the young man replied as if he was addressing an idiot, slowly and with care.

“Great. Tell him we’ve arrived, would you? And can you get some coffee for the men?” The commander brushed the young man aside as he spoke, sauntering past him into the house, leaving no doubt that they should follow.

They crossed the threshold, past the now clearly irritated young man, and into the hall; a cool, high ceilinged room with a black and white checkered tile floor, and flanked on either side with elaborately carved, dark wood staircases that curved up to the floor above. Ariadne could see that it had been made to appear that branches were growing around each spindle and newel: Holly leaves, berries and even the spikes of twigs had been coaxed from the wood of the left, and to her right it seemed to be oak. Huge, gold framed paintings hung up the stairs; she thought she saw a Caravaggio and a Titian as she looked up. Sunlight poured in from above, and the air smelled of wax polish, coffee and flowers. The overall effect was of a tasteful, but astronomically expensive, European country hotel.

“We’ll be in the boss’ study,” the commander turned to the young man as he was closing the door, and made a shooing gesture, ignoring his irritated expression. “Go on, Samuels. Don’t forget the coffee!” He added in a loud voice as he scurried away. “Damn butler,” the commander muttered to himself as he lead them away. “Five minutes in that suit and he’s so far above him self he’s in orbit.”

They were shepherded through another double door into an opulent reception room decorated in shades of faded gold, through a sitting room with immaculate couches covered in orange and green striped fabric and dotted with polished tables bearing lamps and silver framed photos, none of which she was close enough to see clearly. They turned left, were walked through a library with floor to ceiling bookcases and a persian carpet, another sitting room with a marble fireplace and dark blue drapes and up to a closed door. The commander stopped and knocked gently. When there was no response he opened it, and they were prodded inside behind him, over to a small couch and pushed down to sitting. The commander jerked his head, and Arthur’s pack was dropped in front of them.

 

“Stay with them,” the commander ordered, and their escort took up position facing them, one man at each side of the couch. “I’ll go and find the boss.”

Ariadne forced herself to sit still and ignore the men watching her. If she was at home right now she’d be— No, not that, she told herself sharply. Look at where you are. Move your eyes. Notice everything. The room was large, dominated by a enormous window that looked out onto a wide landscape. Mountains bracketed a lush, green bowl of a valley, dotted with roofs and houses clinging to the slopes. A rich lawn rolled up from a line of trees that divided it from the land beyond to a terrace that jutted out from the house. Between the lawn and the trees she could just make out the glitter of sunlight on water where a small lake had been dug out of the flat land. In front of the window was a long, dark wood desk, polished into perfect reflections and almost artfully scattered with papers, a black and gold fountain pen, a few framed photos and a laptop pushed over to one side.

There was a clump of footsteps over the wooden floor of the next room, and she could hear the commander’s voice, speaking in a deferential hush:

“...we found in them in the forest, sir. American, a man and a woman. They had a fire, and a small camp, and they insisted that were only there because they were hiking and got lost.”

“Anything else?” The reply was in a deep, male, English accented voice.

“They had a bag, a rucksack, but we didn’t find any weapons. They say they’re not lovers, but they were tucked up together very cozily when we found them.”

“Interesting,” the other man replied. “Any resistance?”

“They came peacefully enough in the end. The woman is stubborn and nosy, when she isn’t pretending not to be scared. She was asking about you on the way here. The man,” the commander’s voice grew amused. “He’s like a statue until you find his pressure points. And she is definitely one of them.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” the other man mused. “Well then, let’s clean this up, shall we?”

Ariadne swallowed and took a deep breath. Aim for the throat, the bridge of the nose and the instep, she reminded herself. Shit yourself if you can. Don’t make it easy. Don’t go quietly. Arthur’s arm pressed against hers for a moment, and it was so reassuring to her that she felt stupid and grateful at what such a small comfort produced. She didn’t dare look at him, so she leant into his touch for as long as she dared before pulling away.

The two men came into the room with the commander leading the way, his head dipped in a respectful nod. Ariadne allowed herself a rapid glance at the man behind him; stocky, with neatly combed gray hair, all broad shoulders and powerful arms dressed casually in with the topmost buttons of his dark shirt undone. Ariadne kept her eyes deliberately away from his face, and as soon as she’d looked at him she looked away and stared straight ahead, keeping him as much to the edge of her vision as possible.

The man stopped, folded his arms and there was a long, long silence.

“Jesus Christ,” he finally said, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Well, as I live and breathe. Ariadne?”

The sound of her name made her start, and she looked up, right at the man’s face. He was staring at her, his eyebrows drawn together over his pale blue eyes, his full lips parted, the shape and detail of his features bursting out of her memory; from his strong jaw and his whiskered cheeks to his straight nose and irrepressible smirk.

“Eames?” She replied incredulously, even as she studied him. This was an older Eames, a more powerful and better living Eames, but still definitely, recognisably, him. The fear was bleeding out of her with every second, replaced with a stupid, hot relief.

“And Arthur?” Eames’ face was a picture of surprise.

“Hello Eames,” Arthur’s voice was level, unflustered and unshocked.

Eames turned to the commander and snapped his fingers. “Uncuff them!”

“Boss.” The commander hesitated, obviously rattled by the mutual recognition. “Are you sure you want—”

“Now!” Eames barked, then turned to the men either side of the couch. “Davide, Marcus, you’re dismissed. Go back to the barrack room and organise for your morning patrols.”

The commander fumbled the key into the cuffs on her wrists, releasing them with a snick that made her sigh with relief, rotating her hands and rubbing at the red marks they’d left behind. He uncuffed Arthur, who rolled his shoulders and straightened his spine with an appreciative grunt, then hesitated again.

“You’re also dismissed, Michael.” Eames’ tone brooked no argument. “On your way to the barrack room, send Sullivan to her Ladyship and tell her we have guests, and tell Samuels to ensure we are not disturbed on any account until I say otherwise, unless he’s keen to return to being a boot boy.” A glimmer of amusement appeared in the commander’s eyes. “And have Luis drive over to Caltalamsaide immediately,” Eames added, looking Ariadne and Arthur over again. “The message is two bluebirds. He’ll understand.”

“Of course, boss.” He dipped his head in a respectful nod, shot Ariadne one last grin, and left, shutting the door behind him.

Eames didn’t say a word until the commander’s footsteps had faded away, holding up his index finger to indicate they too should be quiet.

“There, now we can talk.” He relaxed from his martial posture with a pleased sigh, and dropped into an armchair set across from the couch. “Michael is a fine soldier and a first class commander, but he has ears that flap so hard they cause draughts.” He reached into a silver box on the table next to him, took out a cigarette and lit it with a small silver lighter.

“Now.” He shook his head as he exhaled. “My god. Arthur. It’s been, what,” he frowned, “twenty-five odd years? You have aged incredibly badly.” His smirk appeared with characteristic glee. “Unlike you, Ariadne. You look just as good as the last time I saw you, if a shade more,” he paused as if to consider her, then with relish finished, “rumpled. So, tell me, what on earth are you doing here, and why did my men find you camped in the middle of my woods at sparrow’s fart this morning? Because I have to say, usually we break trespassers’ kneecaps.” He tapped ash into a blue glass dish and sat back expectantly.

“We were looking for you,” Arthur replied, ignoring Eames’ jibe.

“For me?” Eames rolled his eyes and shook his head again. “Arthur, how many times do I have to tell you that you are the world’s worst liar before you give up trying to bullshit me? I’m not exactly what you would call hard to find, and if you were planning on sneaking up on me, I don’t think having a camp out with a sodding great fire the night before is your idea of stealth. Let’s try again, shall we?” He turned to her. “Ariadne, what were you doing in my woods last night?”

She shot a rapid look at Arthur before she spoke. “We didn’t know this was your estate. We’d just arrived here—”

 

“From where?” Eames’ eyes narrowed.

“Montana,” Arthur replied when Ariadne hesitated.

“I see, so you just dropped in from Montana?” His eyebrows had risen so high they were almost at his hairline. “Lord in heaven, are you two off your faces on something? Or have you both finally succumbed to somnacin sickness after some idiotic adventure gone tits up?” He looked from her to Arthur again, his eyes narrowing and eyebrows drawing together. “Oh, please don’t tell me you’re here to try and extract from me. I might have been out of the game for a quarter of a century, but there’s absolutely no way you could get anything from me. I know you’re full of your opinion of yourself, Arthur and Ariadne, I know you’re quite, quite talented but even you must know it would be stupid to promise that you could, no matter how much they offered you. Was it a lot?” he added conversationally. “I know that I have quite the knack for pissing off every other business acquaintance I make, but I didn’t think they’d go that far.”

“No, Eames.” Arthur leaned forward. “We’re not extractors and we had no idea that this was all you, but we do need to talk to you about dreaming. Do you still have your totem?”

“Why?” Eames asked sharply.

“Do you have it?” Arthur repeated with force.

“Somewhere,” he shrugged. “What do you want to know for?”

“This is very important,” Ariadne made herself to speak as calmly as she could. “Have you checked your totem since Los Angeles?”

Eames frowned. “Look, touched though I am that you’re concerned about me and my life post PASIV, I really don’t need any help. I’m doing fine. I’ve got a good business, a fantastic wife, wonderful kiddiewinks, houses all over the place, and no sign of my faculties degrading. I even met Robert Fischer at some charity thing a couple of years ago and you know what? Not a problem. Didn’t feel a thing. Hell’s Bells, Peter Browning lived next door to me in Tuscany, and I never so much as wobbled.”

 

“Eames, I know that you’ve been fine, OK? I understand that everything is great for you.” Ariadne looked him right in the eye. “It was great for me and Arthur too. But you need to believe me when I say this...” Arthur’s hand tightened around hers briefly. “We’re still dreaming.”

The door opened before anyone could say another word, making all three of them start. A tall, slender woman with rich, red hair, wearing a beautifully elegant knitted dress breezed into the room in a gust of perfume, and glided up to Eames’ chair.

 

“Will, what the hell is going on?” She sounded amused rather than long suffering, with a cut crystal English accent. She leaned over and kissed Eames on the cheek, then sneakily took a drag on his cigarette before he could move it. “Ah.” She blew the smoke out with obvious pleasure. “Are these our guests?” She turned her head, and smiled at them. Ariadne felt Arthur tense next to her, and she had to bite the inside of her lip to stop herself gasping in shock.

Despite her beautiful green eyes, artfully dressed chignon and the smatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the woman’s face was Mal’s.

 

“Hello,” she said warmly. “I’m Beatrix Eames. Lady Eames if we’re bowing and scraping, which we clearly are not. You can call me Bea, if you prefer.”

“Arthur Moss,” Arthur stood without hesitation and offered her his hand. She smiled, shook it and turned to Ariadne.

“And Mrs—?” she asked politely.

“No,” Ariadne corrected her rapidly, refusing to look at either Arthur or Eames, “My name is Ariadne—”  She stumbled, nearly giving her married name before she could think otherwise. “Porter.”

Beatrix accepted her handshake without any more than a quirk of her eyebrows. “Well, I heard from Michael that you slept in the woods last night, and despite the fact my husband has the manners of an oik, I do not. So I have come to see if you would care to have a hot bath, some breakfast and some sleep in a real bed.” She beamed at them both. Ariadne turned to Arthur, and they shared a look. Even without him speaking, she could guess his line of thought as she was having the same one: right at this moment they weren’t going to get Eames alone and back on the subject of dreams without a struggle. They were in a house with armed men in a close proximity, plus Beatrix, who even as an unknown quantity was unlikely to be a walkover if they tried to carry on.

 

“That would be very nice,” Ariadne replied cordially. “We can continue our talk later, right Eames?”  She looked at him, his expression slightly absent as he frowned at her. “Perhaps you could look at the item we mentioned?”  She added.

“I—” Eames shook his head, “I could, I suppose,” he said vaguely “There’s some other things I need to see to before Yusuf gets here."

Ariadne pounced on his words. "Yusuf? Yusuf's here?"

 

"Darling, why didn't you say Yusuf was coming over as well?" Beatrix sighed before Eames could answer her. "When?"

"This afternoon. I thought he might like to join us all for supper," Eames gave her a charming smile. "Sullivan can lay another place, kill another fatted piglet, no problem.”

“Sullivan will be making sure Ms. Porter and Mr. Moss are comfortable first,” Beatrix said as she swatted his shoulder with a playful slap, “you inconsiderate swine. Fine, I’ll let her know. Ms Porter,” she inclined her head to Ariadne. “Mr. Moss, perhaps you'd like to come with me?”

“Yes, thank you.” Arthur stood, with Ariadne a beat behind and, since there was very little else they could do for the moment, followed Beatrix out of the room and away from Eames.

~*~


	6. Chapter 6

~*~

Beatrix led them upstairs, down a long corridor to an open door and ushered them inside. The room was large, bright and decorated in shades of pale blue. A dark, wooden framed bed big enough to sleep four sat at a right angle to the doorway, flanked by a pair of matching night tables each set with a lamp and a water jug. On the opposite side of the room in front of the tiled fireplace, was a soft, low couch laden with cushions and a pair of armchairs. In one corner a pair of bookcases filled the walls, and in front of the windows a vase of fresh lilies glowed atop a polished table in their crystal vase.

“I apologise for only having one suite for you,” Beatrix crossed the room and opened a door in the far corner. “The dressing room and the bathroom are through here,” she gestured. “There are nightclothes in the dresser you can use. Sullivan will be here shortly with some breakfast for you. Is there anything else I can get you in the meantime?”

Ariadne shook her head. Arthur glanced around slowly. “A newspaper, if you have one,” he said gravely.

“I’ll have Sullivan bring the papers with your breakfast.” Beatrix smiled brightly. “Now I shall leave you to get washed up.” She backed out of the room, and closed the door firmly behind her.

Arthur held up a warning hand as Ariadne started to speak. He shook his head, then tapped his ear.

“Would you like to have a bath first?” he said out loud.

Ariadne frowned as Arthur pointed to the corridor, then indicated the lamps and the bookcase.

“I’d love to,” she replied as he crept over to the nearest lamp. Arthur nodded, making a carry on gesture with his hand as he carefully unscrewed the bulb in one of the lamps. “Perhaps we could share one?” she finished with a slight internal cringe. She sounded like a bad romantic heroine trying to lure her hero into debauchery.

“What a wonderful idea,” Arthur lifted the bulb up gently and his face tightened. “I'll go and run it now, shall I?”  He beckoned her over as he spoke. Ariadne tiptoed to his side and followed his pointing finger. Attached to the base of the bulb was a minute plastic capsule, the top third filled with what looked like a tinted copper strip and the base stopped with a delicate whorl of gold and blue wires ending in a red cap. _Listening device_ , Arthur mouthed slowly. She pointed to the bathroom and he nodded, replacing the bulb with the same delicacy he’d used to take it out.

“Come on,” she hesitated and tried for a sultry purr, “lover.” Arthur raised his eyebrows in an expression she decided was surprise, but could just as easily have been horror.

“I’m coming, my,” he worked his mouth around as he looked at her desperately, “precious pie.” Ariadne felt her mouth fall open as he winced at her. No, she decided, this was horror, but only because she couldn’t laugh her head off. Where the hell had he learned to seduce women to come out with that?

Once they were inside the bathroom Arthur locked the door and turned both the bath taps and the shower on full. Then he caught her shoulder and spoke softly into her ear.“Sit on the floor and keep your voice low. The devices they’re using need power and usually they can’t get wet, so if there is one in here it’s in the light fittings or switches. They’re the kind that are activated by sound, so the water will give us some cover, but the further we are from any bugs the better.”

She nodded quickly, and they sat down, cross legged and face to face on the bath mat.

“Precious pie?” she whispered.

“I’m out of practice.” Arthur winced again. “Sorry. But you called me lover, so I had to think of something quickly.”

“Darling or sweetheart would have done. Even babe at a push.”

“I don’t say things like that very often. It was the first thing I thought of.” Arthur looked pained. “But they think we’re romantically entangled, and if they keep thinking of that as leverage then that’s better for us.” Ariadne felt her stomach squeeze, and brutally shoved the sensation away.

“Who’s dream do you think this is?” She changed the subject as fast as she could. Better not to talk about last night, she decided. They had no time for wrestling with the meaning of a sexual encounter, and she wasn’t willing to do so with any prying ears taking notes.

“It’s Eames’,” Arthur replied without hesitation.

“How are you so sure? Couldn’t it just as easily be Yusuf projecting Eames?”

“The coat of arms above the door,” he said, and Ariadne frowned at him.

“What the hell?”

“Eames is the son of a British peer, a baron to be exact. Second son, from his father’s second marriage,” Arthur qualified. “He went to officer training school because he was never intended to inherit, then transferred to overseas intelligence with MI6. In his mid twenties his older brother died in a car accident, and shortly after that he fell out with his father, got disowned and left the SIS all in the space of three years.”

“And this is relevant because—?” she prodded.

“The first time I ever shared a dream with him that coat of arms was a statue in a city square. The second time it was on a letterhead for the fake company we were part of. It’s his family escutcheon, and it’s one of his particular dream symbols. Eames carries his family heritage, and particularly his father. This could only have come from him.”

“So how are we going to talk to him? He’s never more than a few rooms from any one of his projections, and you saw what happened when we raised the subject. We’ll never convince him of anything if Beatrix or Michael or whoever barges in every time we do. And we can’t take a whole house of projections on ourselves, no matter how good your bag is at producing things when we need them.”

Arthur clenched his jaw. “We could look for his totem ourselves, but that would invalidate it for him if we touched it. We could persist in reminding him, but who knows how long that would take to nudge him over. We could lock him in a room with us if we had to, but that would mean we’d have no time between closing the door and having his projections try to get in.”

“So what does that leave?” Ariadne asked.

“We can kill him,” Arthur said blandly.

“Will that work? Don’t we risk just trapping him down here, or killing him in reality?” Ariadne heard her voice go high despite her best efforts.

“I have no definite way of knowing.” Arthur locked eyes with her as he spoke in a cool, calm and deadly quiet tone. “But it’s an option. Believe me, I know Eames. He’d rather be dead than left as a drooling vegetable.”

“But not if he doesn’t know he has a choice,” Ariadne replied with force. “We have to keep trying to tell him that this is a dream so he can decide.”

Any reply Arthur was going to give was forestalled by a loud knock on the door of the suite.

He jumped up and started scooping handfuls of water from under the taps, throwing them into the bath and against the walls.

“Quick,” he hissed. “Laugh.”

Ariadne jerked away from the flying water and tried her best, making an sound like a polite response to a bad joke. Arthur gave her a look that plainly said What the hell was that? But before she could tell him to do better, he opened his mouth groaned:  “Yeah babydoll, that’s good. Give it to your daddy, that’s it.”

The door to the room beyond opened, and there was a jangle of china and glass being moved.

Ariadne wanted to gawp at him again, but instead she grabbed the uptake and made a run for it.

“Oh daddy, I love your huge—” She waved her hands, groping for a phrase that wasn’t too pornographic or stupid. “ _Man missile_ ,” she finished lamely, failing on both fronts. To his credit, Arthur didn’t so much as let his face flicker, aside from a vague, pained tightening of his eyes.

In the room beyond someone sniggered, then the door closed again. Arthur threw a few more handfuls of water for good measure, then sank back down onto his knees.

“Man missile?” he whispered.

“You’re not the only one who cracks under pressure, OK?” She shot back, then in spite of herself broke into a grin. “That was ridiculous,” she shook her head as Arthur grinned back at her.

“Yes, but it worked.” He replied a shade smugly. “We’re pretty good together, don’t you think?” Ariadne felt her smile soften, and against all her better judgement found herself replaying the night before, the feel of him against her skin and the heat of his touch bolting through her in a rapid tremor.

“Yes,” she agreed softly. “We’re not bad.”

They both hesitated, and for a moment they just looked at each other.

“So,” Ariadne made herself start. “We’re going to keep trying with Eames?”

“For a few days at most, I think.” Arthur said slowly. “If we can’t do it by then, we’re unlikely to ever manage. Then we’ll try the alternative.” His expression shuttered, his meaning all too plain.

“OK?”

“OK,” Ariadne reluctantly agreed. She would rather any other course of action, but part of her was prepared to accept that if between them she and Arthur couldn’t rouse Eames, then short of trying to leave his dream and come back, something she wasn’t sure they had time to do, let alone the resources to escape his projections, they had very little option.

“Let’s eat some of the food they’ve brought us,” Arthur murmured. “Then perhaps we should actually get cleaned up and get some rest.”

Ariadne nodded again. “Yes, OK. Damn, I slept last night, but for some reason I feel wiped out right now,” she sighed as she scrubbed at her face with her hands.

“Suppression takes energy,” Arthur said sympathetically. “Especially if you’re in a deep level dream, out of practice and holding back something strong. Plus you’ve been through two other people’s dreams in the last day, walked for around half of it, slept outdoors then been captured and now you’re being observed by a wary mind. Your stress level would drain you even if the physical exertion didn’t.” He rubbed her shoulder gently and gave her a soft smile. “You stop for a few minutes and it hits you like a ton of bricks. Come on.” He stood up and helped her to her feet. “Food, wash, rest. It’ll be easier once you do.”

Ariadne sighed again, and the wave of bone deep weariness she’d been staving off without even realising it rose up. She wanted to let herself slump into Arthur and let him take care of her, even for a few minutes. To stop instinctively pushing back at the wall she had thrown up against her old life; to stop worrying in the very back of her mind that this was more than they could manage and that all that was waiting for them was pain and death; for the not knowing and the unpredictable to resolve so she would know perfectly what to do and how to get out. It was more tempting to let go and give someone else control than it had ever been since she’d started this, even as she heard herself clamour that giving up and letting it go would be failing, and she had never, ever permitted herself to do anything less than succeed.

“Come on,” Arthur repeated. Perhaps he had read her mind, because his arm slid carefully  around her shoulders, leaning her against him, and the relief at that small comfort made almost made her bones dissolve in gratitude. “Why are you doing this?” She wanted to ask him, over and over until the answers filled her head and drowned it all out. But it felt so fragile she didn’t know if she could bear to hear what he might say, or what she might find in herself if she were asked in return. So she rested against him, grateful for the crumbs he offered, as he shut off the water and led her out of the bathroom.

~*~

Over the confusing background noise of cups, plates, glasses and dish covers, Arthur flicked through the stack of papers that had been placed on the trolley with their breakfast.

“Why did you ask for a newspaper?” Ariadne asked quietly as she poured herself a fresh cup of coffee.

“It’s sometimes a good indicator of where the dreamer thinks they are and what kind of world they've constructed." Arthur scraped butter on a slice of toast as he spoke in a soft voice. "Any underlying structures they might be employing."

“And?” Ariadne served herself a portion of scrambled eggs.

Arthur made a face and fanned them out. “ _Corriere Della Sera_ , _Le Monde_ , _Die Welt_ , _The London Times_ , _New York Times_ , _Washington Post_ and _The Los Angeles Times_. I seem to recall Eames prefered _The Sun_ and _The Guardian_ when we worked in London. The best guess I can make is that we’re in Italy, probably the Mediterranean close to Sicily, if the place name of Yusuf’s town and the countryside we're in is any indicator.” Arthur flicked to the business section of The London Times and scanned down the pages.

“The house has Palladian features, which suggests it’s probably English or maybe Italian," Ariadne forked up a mouthful of eggs, mushrooms and toast and took a moment to savour the rich, buttery flavour as she chewed. “Mmm. But I think English. The large square windows, the lack of ornament except for the coat of arms, the wings being the same height as the house, the symmetry, the arch window over the main door, all those huge rooms downstairs...” She took a mouthful of coffee. “That's early period English Palladian.” she concluded, and arranged some more food on her fork.

“Hmm,” Arthur sipped his coffee, then tossed _The Times_ aside in favour of _Die Welt_. “No mention of anything out of the ordinary. The company names look all familiar, stock market looks about the same.” He frowned and carried on reading.

“He said he was in business, but does that necessarily mean it’s legitimate? If we're near Sicily, then perhaps—?” Ariadne clattered her knife and fork against her plate.

Arthur snorted quietly. “Cosa Nostra, you mean? Eames the made man?” Arthur shook his head. “He’s too much of an individual to be playing mafioso out here. He could fake it for a while, I agree, but ultimately he likes to be in charge. This is his set up, whatever it is, not someone else’s. Ah, what’s this?” He broke off and read in silence. Ariadne poured herself some orange juice and attacked the plate of warm pain aux raisins that she had discovered while Arthur was muttering.

“My German is rusty but I think,” Arthur made a face. “Listen: _William Eames, joint president of the conglomerate EamesAmari, yesterday announced an excellent quarterly profit figure for the pharmaceuticals arm of the multinational company. He praised the research and development that had taken place in the last year, in particular the refinements made to sleep therapies. EamesAmari has been a world leader in developing psychoactives, and has made great strides in the field of antidepressants, lucid dream inducers and allied therapies. This is alongside a boom year for the construction and manufacturing division of EamesAmari, and a diversification into food production which has seen the purchase of agricultural land in continental Europe, particularly in France and Italy_.”

“So he’s turned into Tony Stark,” Ariadne tore off some more pastry.

“Does that sound like something Eames would do?” Arthur frowned again. “Would he be out here with a private military unit, taking care to employ everyone from the area, if he had suddenly turned into a clean living, legitimate businessman?”

“Well, they do say business is like gambling with higher stakes,” Ariadne murmured. “If he had the money we started off with, perhaps he would try and become legitimate. He’s Lord Eames, much beloved boss and family man.”

“But he’s also Eames, ex-forger and SIS agent. He enjoys the thrill, even more than we did. There’s more to this.” Arthur folded the paper and put it aside. “Something grayer, something less savoury.” He took a swig of coffee. “He’s got power, and a lot of it. You don’t come by that just by being squeaky clean.”

“Will it make him harder to convince to leave?” Ariadne glanced up as Arthur began to eat his eggs and toast.

“Mmm hmm.” Arthur nodded as he chewed. “If he’s entrenched to the point where he’s amassed this much, telling him otherwise is going to be a wrench that his unconscious won’t like. Which explains why Beatrix was so quick to interrupt us earlier, and why they’ve stashed us away up here.”

“What can we do?”

“We’ve made a start. You told him he was dreaming, and that will start to make him wonder. Eames is a curious bastard. We just have to hope we can keep him doing that.”

“Should we go and try again?”

“No,” Arthur shook his head. “He’s too protected at the moment. Let it sink in, let him bring down some of his defences, so when we go back he’ll be more open to what we suggest. At the moment he probably thinks we’re messing him around, but after a while he’ll start to question this scenario. It’s less of a risk to us, because if he chooses rather than gets forced outright we’re less likely to unleash his projections until he’s ready to let go.”

“Right,” Ariadne replied slowly. “OK. So we wait for him to come to us?”

“Don’t worry.” Arthur’s smile was sly and sharp. “I know him. We just have to hope he’s as quick on the uptake as he always was before.”

~*~

Ariadne showered while Arthur finished eating, dried her hair and pulled on pair of oversized brushed cotton pyjamas she found in the dresser, just as Beatrix had promised. She wandered back into their suite to find Arthur reading The New York Times and finishing his coffee with every semblance of enjoyment, only glancing up when she poured herself some more orange juice.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked at a normal volume, smiling at her as he looked her slowly up and down.

“Ready to drop,” Ariadne yawned over her juice. The warmth of her clothes and the shower had made her feel dopey and pleasantly relaxed after their morning so far, which seemed to have tensed every single part of her into anxious alertness. Relaxing even a little felt like a luxury; despite the constant need to ensure her suppression was holding fast, it was as if for the first time since she had left her old life behind she was back in the dream state she had always worked in before, the easy awareness of unreality making things seem fluid and malleable, along with the sheer effort it took to hold on to distant real life and not give in to the temptations dreams presented; the tension holding her steady and keeping her focused. Despite that she could feel her fatigue, the blurring in her head that made her want to sleep a sleep of utter peace and silence where her conscious effort could lessen and her brain refresh itself.

Arthur got up from the couch, and after a momentary pause, he leaned forward and kissed her. Gently, undemandingly, a brush of his lips across hers that asked for nothing more than the touch she was prepared to give in reply. It felt as soothing as the warm water had been as she leant into it, a reminder of his presence at her side in this alien place. All the same, she pulled away before it could turn into more. She and Arthur were a jumble in her head of old, wilfully ignored crush; the desperate clinging together of two shipwreck survivors and the milky clean rawness of something new and barely formed trying to grow. She didn’t want to risk exploring it with so much hanging over them as there was in this moment. He kissed her forehead, combing back her hair with his fingers, then let go.

“I’ll wash up, then I’ll take the other side of the bed, OK?” he murmured. “Unless you want me to get on the couch?”

“No,” she replied softly. “Sleep next to me. I like knowing you’re there,” she admitted before she could stop herself.

Arthur smiled down at her. “Me too,” he said earnestly.

She was half awake when he climbed into the enormous bed next to her. She listened to him arranging himself against the sheets, then with one cautious hand, she reached out and put her hand on his chest. His heartbeat was a small, persistent thump against her palm. _Real life in an unreal body_ , she thought drowsily, _real mind, real person, false shell_.

Arthur sighed, and she pulled him closer, pressing her mouth to his, their  limbs tangling up as she rested against him and fell asleep.

~*~

Ariadne went from asleep to awake without a pause. Not the slow, groggy rise from slumber as she might had been accustomed to as a working mother, fumbling at her alarm and duvet. One moment she had been laying in a dreamless rest, then her eyes snapped open and her head was as clear as an icicle. She was lying in the bed alone, the sheets scrunched around her and her pillow crammed between her shoulder and her head. The sunlight that had been so bright earlier was muted now, it’s colour softer and muted by the clouds she could see scudding across the sky. The treetops were shifting in the breeze that had sprung up, and from outside she could hear children’s voices, calling, laughing and shrieking in delight at something. A dog barked, and somewhere close by a bird sang in a high chirrup. _Eames’ dream_ , she remembered sharply, _the Anglo Italian house_.

She sat up, pushing the covers away, and saw Arthur, seated calmly on the couch, reading the papers as he had been this morning and eating the segments of an orange..

“You slept well,” he smiled at her, looking up. “Our clothes have been laundered, and they’ve brought us some more food.” He tilted his head towards the trolley parked in front of the fireplace.

“What time is it?” she asked, then corrected herself. “Here, I mean. What time of day?”

“Late afternoon,” Arthur replied as she clambered out of bed and stretched. “I’ve been awake for about an hour. I tried to see Eames again, but Michael was outside his study and I got deflected. He’s in there with Yusuf, or at least that’s what Michael said.” Arthur poured some tea from a silver teapot into a creamy china cup, added milk and brought it to her. “He brought me back upstairs and now he’s outside. I get the feeling he doesn’t want us snooping around.”

“Did you manage anyway?” Ariadne murmured, slurping her tea with a loud smack of her lips. It was Darjeeling, all smoke and sap and impossibly refreshing at that moment. Arthur smirked.

“A little,” he whispered. “The house is well staffed, but the troop seem to be based on a lower level, out of sight, so they’re obviously not used to guard the house so much during the day as the whole estate. The rest of the staff are domestic, maids, the butler, a few footmen, the housekeeper. They aren’t armed and don’t look combat trained, but that means very little. The rooms downstairs are very public, lots of open doors and things that look like they were put there to be seen rather than used a great deal. The rooms up here are mostly closed, so I have no idea, except that this is probably where the family lives.”

Ariadne wandered around the bed and over to the window. On the lawn a small group of children were playing with a golden furred puppy. Three were red blond, their hair grown out in baby waves around their heads. The other two had dark brown colouring, a boy with ruler straight hair and a girl with a ponytail from which wisps were falling as she laughed and ran around the grass. They were all dressed in jeans and T shirts, as if they had just come from school.

“Who are the children?” She asked.

“Eames and Yusuf’s,” Arthur replied, coming to stand next to her. “Yusuf’s wife is here too, having tea with Lady Beatrix in the garden. I saw them on the terrace when Michael was bringing me back.”

Ariadne watched one of the blond children pick up the puppy, which yapped and pedaled its paws with excitement as it was gifted with a messy kiss on its head. A memory of Carl, pleading for a dog with his eyes screwed tight shut and his hands in fists, intruded into her thoughts with the sharp slice of a shard of glass. She pushed it back, closing her eyes and breathing with slow deliberate breaths.

Arthur’s hand touched her forearm, closing on it for a moment and tightening.

“They aren’t going to let us out of here until they’re ready,” Arthur said softly. “They’re rattled, which means Eames is starting to have doubts. Look at the sky,” he added. Ariadne opened her eyes and glanced up. The clouds were still billowing past on the impossibly blue sky, but they were thickening, and changing colour as they massed up into larger forms, breaking the sunlight up into shifting patterns.

“Surely the Yusuf projection would be dissuading him,” Ariadne frowned as she murmured back.

“Assuming that he is a projection,” Arthur finished.

“Which he might not be?” Ariadne sipped her tea.

“I didn’t see him, so I have no way of knowing. But if he and Eames travelled or worked together after Fischer, I presume it’s possible they made this between them, or that they have overlapping environments that move around each other. I might have projected you,” Arthur hesitated briefly, “but you never projected any of us, am I right?”

“No, although—” Lance pushed into her thoughts this time, his features resolving onto Arthur’s face, and it took all she had not to recoil. “There were similarities. Like Lady Beatrix. Did Eames know Mal?” she asked again cautiously, recalling his reaction from earlier.

“She never mentioned him if she did,” Arthur replied after a long pause. “And he’s never said anything to Cobb or myself. But Miles worked with a lot of agencies before he became a teacher, and Cobb and Eames have known each other since before I started working with Cobb, so they might have had contact either way.”

The children had fallen into an enthusiastic game of tag, complete with much laughter and tumbling around. “You had children, didn’t you?” Ariadne asked softly before she could stop herself.

“Yes,” Arthur hesitated, then carried on. “A girl and a boy. Elizabeth.” He stopped and corrected himself. “Beth, and Andrew.”

“I had a son, called Carl, and a daughter we called Aisling. It means ‘dream’, you know. In Gaelic.” She jammed her thoughts closed even as she spoke, making an offering equal to the one he had given her, regardless of the cost she was making in the effort.

They stood there, watching the children play, and eventually Arthur put his arm around her waist.

“The love we had for them wasn’t false,” he said gently. “If it was, we wouldn’t feel like this. They might not have been real, but the loss is.”

“Thank you,” Ariadne felt herself waver, and in that instant forced herself to move back, focus on something else, to see the shapes and the details before she broke into a stupid, wailing mess.

“Don’t you think it’s strange,” she mused quietly, feeling the thoughts half forming as she spoke. “That we all got married? I was, you were, Eames is, and Yusuf, if it's him. And we all had children, most of us a boy and a girl. You, me, and maybe Yusuf. Eames has three, but I’m guessing he has one boy and one girl too. We all apparently turned away from dreamshare and did other things, we all settled down and stopped. Three, maybe four such different people, yet we all did such a—” she shook her head slowly.

“Regular thing?” She could hear the frown in his voice. “A normal thing? Did you never think about it, before?” He added.

“Sometimes, but as something a long way off. I wanted to have someone, but—” She shook her head in frustration. “The usual thing to want is to find someone to spend the rest of your life with. Get married, have the two point five kids you're supposed to, the house, the dog, the day job. It's so cut and dried, what you're supposed to do, such a bunch of small ambitions that we’re supposed to measure ourselves and each other against, but that's not life. It's messy and strange and painful and wonderful, and we're not supposed to be able to predict it. But here we all had this similar life and never once did we think that—”

Arthur’s body tensed up against her side. “What?” She asked, her train of thought derailing. “What?” She turned her head and looked up at him, and his face was furious, a dark cloud of anger that coloured his features from his brow to his mouth.

“Who else has been here before, and was here long enough to be able to shape it before we so much as even started?”

The penny dropped with a cold, hard thunk.

“Cobb?” Ariadne whispered.

“Married, two children, a boy and a girl; wanted to start over away from dreamshare; wanted to go back to his family; made his wife believe what he wanted her to when she refused to change her mind,” Arthur said with cold finality. “Dominick Cobb.”

~*~

They sat on the couch together as the sky darkened. After a while, Ariadne opened her arms and wrapped Arthur up to her.

“So we’re all living Cobb’s idea of a perfect life?” she had said after a long, long silence.

Arthur took a deep breath in. “It’s like the maze. He put the path down and we all followed it. He gave us the shape, we just filled in the detail.”

“But, these were things I wanted. I did what I had always wanted to do. I had the career and the family I thought I might want, if I ever got around to it.”

“Thought you might want, or thought you could have?” Arthur lent his head on her shoulder. Ariadne felt her throat close at his words. There were things in her life that she hadn’t had, but she’d stopped asking for them. Her life had been perfect, but that perfection had made her stop asking, and stop wondering, and now she could see it for what it was she realised that she’d just been distracted by becoming Ariadne Moses, world class architect, working mother of two, devoted wife.

“I think it was both,” she admitted quietly.

“I think that’s what I got too,” Arthur said into her hair. “Our desires, our self images, his pattern. I’m going to kill him,” he finished matter of factly.

Outside there was a faint rumble of thunder; a storm, a long way off.

For once in her life, Ariadne had nothing to say.

~*~

Eventually Ariadne had dressed, then they’d picked at the bread, cheese and salad that they’d been left to eat while talking in the quietest voices they could manage. After a while they’d settled back on the couch, watching the sky darken, and waiting.

The key ratcheting in the lock shook them both out of their thoughts. Beatrix entered, tutting at the low light and snapping on the overhead lamps.

“I hope you’ve had a restful day,” she said smoothly. “If you’d like to join us for dinner, Yusuf is very keen to see you, as is my husband.” There was a note of tension in her voice that carried into the set of her head and shoulders when Ariadne looked at her.

“We were hoping to have spoken with him earlier,” Ariadne said, and saw her mouth tighten.

“Well, I’m afraid that wasn’t possible.” There was a new sharpness now, a ruffling of the delicate exterior. “My husband had many, many things to attend to, and I am afraid I needed to spend some time with him myself. As his wife, I’m sure you don’t begrudge me that?” One perfect eyebrow arched in time with her question.

“Not at all,” Arthur replied, silkily polite and cool. “I’m sure you had plenty to occupy him. Shall we?” He stood and offered Ariadne his arm.

Beatrix led them back downstairs, through the main hall, then to the right and into a large formal dining room dominated by a dark walnut table that could have seated thirty covered in glass, silver, china and candles that sent out a million sparkles of light from every thing they were reflected in. The drapes were drawn, giving the impression that the panelled walls were windowless and solid, and for one moment Ariadne imagined them being shut in, like rats in trap.

“Mr. Moss and Ms. Porter,” Beatrix announced formally.

“Ariadne,” Yusuf rose from his seat, both his hands extended towards her and a huge smile on his face. His curls were gray, his skin had lost some of its smoothness and his glasses now had the telltale divided lens of bifocals, but he was still pleasantly plump, dressed in a loose waistcoat, shirt and pants. “Arthur,” he pressed a kiss to each of her cheeks then shook Arthur’s hand.

“This is my wife, Radeyah,” Yusuf smiled even more widely as he extended his hand towards a beautiful, brown haired woman with large almond shaped eyes.

“I am pleased to meet you,” she said, taking each of their hands in turn. “Yusuf has told me little about his oldest friends except for William, so I am happy to find he was in such good company.”

“Thank you.” Ariadne dipped her head in what she hoped was a graceful fashion. Between Beatrix and Radeyah she was feeling like an awkward teenager between two marble likenesses of Aphrodite.

“Come,” Yusuf said warmly, “let us eat and talk about each other. I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing since,” he made a thoughtful face, “Paris, wasn’t it?” He looked at Eames,  who was seated at the head of the table and rolling the stem of his glass between his fingers, and as he did so his hand strayed to his waistcoat pocket, covering it almost unconsciously.

“Yes,” Eames replied blandly, “Paris, 2010.” Beatrix shot him a look which was almost poisonous.

“I’m sure Radeyah and I don’t want to sit here while you exchange old drinking stories,” she said with forced smile. “Perhaps you and Yusuf could tell us how your plans for the farms are coming along. Please, sit down, everyone,” she added. “Atkins, would you pour some wine?”

A middle aged man in a dark coat identical to the one Samuels had been wearing materialised from a corner, bottle in hand, making Ariadne start.

“Madam?” he said to her.

“Thank you, yes,” Ariadne smothered her surprise and sat down in the chair Arthur had pulled out for her. The wine filled her glass, so deep red it was almost purple; _Tyrian purple, the royal purple; the colour of freshly coagulated blood;_ a dry as dust little voice whispered out of her memory. Atkins made his round of the table then vanished again, just as Eames held up his glass.

“A toast, I think,” he cleared his throat and recited in a dry voice:

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists;

and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.”

“What a strange toast, dearheart,” Beatrix said pointedly. “But anyway, cheers!” Ariadne saw Arthur exchange a look with Eames as he raised his glass, and there was the barest flicker of the fingers of his other hand, a speck of red and white barely breaking the line of the table before it vanished.

Outside there was a deep growl of thunder, as if the sky were in pain; the briefest pause, then the unmistakable hiss of falling rain.

Arthur took her hand under the table and squeezed it tight for a moment. She gripped back, and mentally let herself take up a prepared stance. Eames had believed them. The seed that they had dropped in his path had taken hold, and he was readying himself somehow. The storm, Beatrix, it all pointed to it. Except, she thought, if Yusuf’s a projection, why isn’t he reacting?

She glanced at him across the table as Atkins served bowls of clear chicken consomme, the hot broth smelling of the essence of a hundred Sunday roast lunches.

“So, Yusuf,” she smiled politely, “what do you do now?”

“I am Eames’ partner in business. We started here as a small, er, pharmaceutical producer,” he smiled. “Then we diversified. Some of our products became very popular, and so you see.” He took a mouthful of soup.

“Do you still make somnacin?” Ariadne prodded. Both Beatrix and Radeyah looked up sharply, and outside the thunder rolled again.

“Do we have to discuss business at the table?” Beatrix had a edge of ice to her tone. “Surely there’s something more interesting we can talk about?”

“Didn’t you suggest we talk about the farms, darling?” Eames shot back with a sharp grin. “Besides, I think it’s a fascinating subject. Yusuf and I used to rattle around Mombasa together, getting into all kinds of scrapes, didn’t we?” He raised his eyebrows at Yusuf as Beatrix made a sharp hissing sound.

“Indeed we did,” Yusuf raised his hand to dab his mouth with a napkin, and as his sleeve pulled back, Ariadne saw the metal bracelet of his wristwatch, the glass of the face twinkling in the light. She reached out and squeezed Arthur’s knee, staring at Yusuf in disbelief. Could they both be sharing this dream, Eames and Yusuf in one giant fantasy of wealth, luxury and private armies? With a cold shock, she realised that if that was the case they would be against two sets of projections, not one, with no weapons in sight.

Arthur’s hand covered hers and he squeezed back briefly before he let go. God knew if he had the message, whatever it was she had been trying to convey aside from surprise and panic. Across from her, Yusuf caught her eye and winked.

“It was a wonderful life,” Yusuf carried on aloud, “selling dreams, running my den, learning all the ways a dream can be collapsed.” Out of the corner of her eye Ariadne thought she saw Beatrix snarl. The storm suddenly cracked and boomed overhead, and the candles flickered.

“It was a useful skill, wasn’t it?” Eames remarked dryly. “Now, remind me. What is the first thing to do when you want to collapse a dream?”

“Ah,” Yusuf said with a smile. “That’s easy. Have the dreamer begin to suppress it, starting with any projections they might have brought in with them. They erase the detail, bit by bit, and then, poof. All gone.”

“That does sound remarkably familiar. Do you think we could still manage it?”

“Darling, this is quite unnecessary,” Radeyah said in a forced lighthearted voice.

“I think we could,” Yusuf said cheerfully. “Shall we try it?”

“No!” Beatrix shouted, her voice ripping into a raw shriek, and lunged towards Eames’s throat.

Ariadne didn’t stop to think, she grabbed her glass in her fist, wine tipping and splattering on the table as she threw it in a spiral of rainbow sparks at Beatrix’ head. She fumbled and caught her fork in her hand, clenching the handle as Radeyah shrieked and dived towards her, her hands outstretched, her nails seeming to shoot out of her fingers into sharp points as Ariadne turned to avoid her, stabbing with the fork at her arms and neck in a wild, uncontrolled flurry.

The table juddered across the floor, china and glass toppling and smashing wildly in a cacophony as the storm outside pitched up, thunder making the walls shake as everything disconnected into limbs, bared teeth, wild eyes, fragments of crystal and rolling candles throwing insane shadows as they spat and guttered. Beatrix lunged at Eames, throwing her body into him as he slammed the table into the door, crashing into his abdomen as he crumpled around the blow. Arthur yelled something, a sharp command just as Ariadne felt Radeyah grab her hair in her fist and pull so hard the pain made her brain white out for a second. She struck backwards with her elbows and her foot, connecting with bone and flesh as twisted herself out of Radeyah’s grip, just as Arthur grabbed her shoulders and looped his arm around her throat, crushing her windpipe so she fell to her knees.

Ariadne dropped the fork and stepped back, her heart pounding as she panted and swallowed. The room was in pieces, chairs tipped up, the table pushed askew, arcs of china pieces and glass shards twinkled on the floor, mixed in with fallen food and spatters of wine that bled into dark pools around everything. Eames was at the far end of the room, holding Beatrix face first against the wall with her wrists trapped behind her back, her head twisted to one side in snarling profile, and a gun to her temple, her beautiful face now marred with a split lip and a swollen eye, her hair fallen in locks down her shoulders as she spat and struggled.

"You fucking idiot!" she raged. " You think you're going to get out of here alive, you fucking cunt? You’ll be dead before you try anything!”

Eames ignored her, instead looking to Arthur. “Got her?” Radeyah was clawing at Arthur’s arms, choking out Yusuf’s name as she tried to get free. Arthur nodded. He’d been struck across the jaw, and a fresh bruise was already blooming on his cheek; but his face was set, his eyes cold and sharp as he looked up, glancing at Ariadne, taking stock of her, an impersonal flick of acknowledgement that she was upright and unhurt as she set her jaw and nodded in return.

“Yusuf, get the rucksack.” Eames ordered.

“How long before Michael brings the troop?” Arthur snatched the tie back of one of the drapes in his free hand, pulled Radeyah’s arms behind her and cinched them together in a thick knot before he picked her up under her armpit and dropped her into a chair.

“Two minutes max,” Eames said as he tightened his grip on Beatrix. “Cable ties, Yusuf, please,” he said through gritted teeth.

Yusuf dropped Arthur’s pack on the table. Rummaging inside produced a handful of zip ties, and passing half to Ariadne, he then moved around the table, knelt before Radeyah and smiled. “Thank you,” he said as he grabbed her feet when she lashed out and fastened her ankles to the chair legs. “You were an excellent wife and a wonderful mother. It was an honour.”

“Yusuf, please.” She was crying in a messy downpour of tears and snot. “Don’t do this, stay with me,” she pleaded as he stood and tied her wrists to the chair back. "I love you," she wailed.

"As a man loves himself, yes, indeed you do," Yusuf replied heavily. “But this too will pass.”

“Lovely sentiments I’m sure, but would someone give me some bloody cable ties please?” Eames grunted as he jammed Beatrix against the wall more firmly. Ariadne shook herself sharply and hurried over. Eames held  Beatrix still as Ariadne fastened a tie around one wrist, looped another through and zipped it shut with a sharp jerk.

“You see what they do? Huh? You see this, all of this? This is them, little princess,” Beatrix hissed at her. “Gentlemen criminals are nothing more than thugs in nice suits, and you’ll never change that, no matter what you do.”

“Do be quiet, dear.” She cringed as Eames’ knee jammed into her lower back, keeping her still as Ariadne tied her ankles together. When she was bound Eames righted a chair and sat her on it, her body bowed forwards and her hair trailing across her face, sticking to the spittle around her lips.

“You’re all dead,” she snarled, “especially you, bastard wastrel son of shit!” The cords on her neck stood out as she screeched at Eames. “Ah! Here comes the cavalry,” she said with manic delight as from outside the windows came the heavy crunch of boots, and inside the house someone started to slam into the heavy wooden door.

“Quickly Eames,” Arthur snapped, “Yusuf, shut it down now.” He grabbed his pack, slung it on his shoulder and grabbed the edge of the table.

“Help me,” he ordered Ariadne.

She skittered around Beatrix, who was screaming “Help! Somebody, help! They’re holding us prisoner!”

Together they heaved the table onto it’s side with a crash. Outside the window someone yelled "Ready!" as the sound of ratcheting metal competed with the thunder and the pounding of the rain.

Arthur pulled her down next to him as Eames and Yusuf dived behind their makeshift barrier. The door cracked in a shower of splintering of wood.

“Take this,” Arthur pressed a gun into her hand and she grasped it, not allowing herself time to hesitate as she took off the safety and clutched it in a double pull grip.

"Aim!"

The door was being hacked at, breaking into pieces with a series of hollow wrenches. Beatrix was still screaming, now in incoherent wails that Radeyah took up.

“Hurry the fuck up!” Arthur barked, his Glock up at his shoulder, his body in a tense crouch.

“Trying, Arthur," Eames said through gritted teeth. Yusuf’s face was screwed up in an expression of absolute concentration, his right hand clenched around his totem so hard his knuckles were going white. “Go back, go back, go back,” he was muttering. “Oh please, go—”

“Fire!”

Arthur curled his body around hers, his front to her back and suddenly it was as if the world was exploding in glass, water and cordite in a slow motion wave. She could feel his hand forcing her head into his chest as there was an almost musical chime of tinkling glass, gently rolling over their heads in a billion fairy dust sparks and dancing water droplets that bounced, rolled and scattered on the floor in a soft billow of smoke. She could see Eames, his body hunched to the floor and his hands over his head, she could hear Arthur’s heart pounding in her ear, feel the gun’s solid mass in her hand as she thought for one clear second _“This is it. This is how we die.”_

But before the thought had even finished she felt the floor pull away from her, and everything she could see rose up and rushed outwards, tearing away from them in a mess of colours and shapes splitting apart. The walls went white, and there was hard, rapid jerk that flung her away from Arthur, pulled her into the air then let her go, her arms and legs kicking uselessly in space as she fell down, air whistling in her ears—

~*~


	7. Chapter 7

~*~

She hit something soft; hands, knees, the tops of her feet sinking into it as if she’d just tripped rather than fallen from a great height. She was cold, breathing in cold and surrounded by it; and everything had gone white. Her head reeled and she could taste her gorge in the back of her throat. Now she understood why Arthur had made her close her eyes when he had suppressed his dream.

Bit by bit her senses rebalanced themselves into order, and she risked looking up. She was kneeling in snow that came up to her elbows, in the middle of a ring of trees stripped bare and black by the cold, their branches scratching at the soft gray sky. Arthur’s gun had got trapped under her right hand as she fell, and when she pulled it free of the hole her arm had made the snow crumbled around her in tiny avalanches.

" _Fuck_ ," she heard Yusuf groan from a little way off,  then spit something out of his mouth. "Fuck, fuck, _fuck_."

She turned herself around, wading and digging so she could move. About six feet away from her Arthur was pulling himself upright, a coating of snow covering his left side as he stood. Further back Eames’ arm flailed in the air as he grunted, swore and sat up, his head and shoulders appearing above the snow line as he stared around him. Arthur nodded to him, turned, caught sight of her, and ploughed towards her as she stood up slowly, the gun still in her hand. The snow came up to mid shin on him and fell away in waves as he walked, marking the clean snow with ripples and ruts.

“Are you OK?” He said as he reached her, and clasped her arms in both his hands, his words coming out in plumes of white. His skin was flushed red with the cold, blossoms of brightness across his cheeks and the tip of his nose. “Ariadne?” He asked quietly. “Are you hurt?”

“Yusuf, have you thrown up yet?" Eames called in the background. "If the answer is yes, raise your hand, I'll come and dig you out."

Arthur rubbed her arms, and the chafing made then tingle. She took a deep breath, letting her head steady, then she managed a thin smile. “No, I’m fine.” She held out his gun, the metal freezing against her skin and he took it back, reengaging the safety without ever taking his eyes from hers.

In the background Yusuf was noisily sick, hacking and coughing his way to an empty stomach with a brutal efficiency. “OK, I’m good,” he croaked. “Fuck,” he added again for good measure.

“Up you get,” Eames replied crisply, and when Arthur stepped aside, encouraging her to walk back along the track he’d carved out, Yusuf was on his feet, his face a little green as he plodded towards the treeline alongside Eames. She followed them, Arthur trailing her, until they were clustered under one of the bare trees, looking out at the land around them.

They were standing on top of a gentle hill that sloped down and away from them at a soft angle towards a wide, open expanse rolled off and met the horizon in an undulating line. Clusters of trees grew in irregular dots, or traced dark lines across the snowy landscape that would suddenly stop and start without any discernable pattern to them. Apart from the trees, and the snow, there seemed to be nothing. Feathers of air stroked her skin, but there were no bird songs or animal calls, no smoke trails rising to the sky or roofs jutting out of the whiteness to catch the eye. It was blank as a fresh page.

“Congratulations everyone,” Eames broke the quiet. “We seem to have arrived in Narnia. Please remember not to accept any lifts from strange women in sleighs, look out for talking beavers and whatever you do, don’t eat the Turkish Delight.” He finished sourly.

Yusuf had wrapped his arms around himself in an attempt to keep warm, and was staring down at the snow field with a grim cast to his features. “Now we have to walk, I suppose.” He shuddered and looked around them again. “Any ideas which direction?”

Arthur had put down his pack and was rummaging inside, coming up with four small silver packets. “Foil blankets,” he explained as he handed them out. “It’s the best I could do.” Ariadne accepted hers, shook it out and gratefully wrapped around her shoulders like a cloak, even if the overall feeling of the thin, crackly material was that she was Thanksgiving turkey about to go in the oven. She carefully bunched her hands into corners to try and warm her fingers up.

“We need to look for water,” she replied. “Running water, a stream most likely.”

Yusuf looked from her back at the snow laden ground again. “Won’t it have frozen in temperatures like this?”

“I don’t know,” she shook her head. “But all the dreams I’ve experienced so far had water running to their centres. Even mine.” She thought of the little fish pool back in her Paris garden before she could stop herself, and screwed the memory back down tight.

“We look for water, and shelter then.” Eames squared his shoulders. “Agreed? Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now,” he sighed as an afterthought. “Shall we?”

 

~*~

 

They walked in a line, down the hill and into the fields below: Arthur, herself, Yusuf and then Eames. After a while it became like the walk across the desert had been, no more than one foot following another foot, following another, over and over in a hypnotic trudge. She could feel the cold seeping into her, numbing her nose, ears, toes and fingers to tight, tingling pieces of flesh that eventually she couldn’t sense at all. The snow melted into the legs of her slacks, boots and socks so after a while they would squelch and cling to her with every step that she made, but she simply forced herself to close off from it. Complaining wouldn’t change it, and she wasn’t the only one having to endure it, so she dismissed it as self indulgence to even mention. Her breath went into her lungs cold and rasped back out again barely any warmer. Ahead of her she could see Arthur, his pack set high on his shoulders as he strode forwards, arms at his sides, his foil blanket tucked around him as best he had been able to manage. She fixed him in her eyeline, sweeping her surroundings for any sign of life or water as she went, and kept moving.

 

~*~

 

They had been walking for a few hours by her estimate when Yusuf spotted the cabin. It was a dark little box of a house, hidden in one of the clusters of trees with it’s roof well below the tree line, as if it had been built to vanish into the landscape around it. It had small windows that reflected back like dark pools, and there was no sign of a path leading to or from it.

“I say we go in, warm up, decide on our next move.” Arthur glanced around at them all, his eyes worried when he reached Ariadne. “Lighting a fire brought your projections to us.” He turned back to Eames. “And they brought us to you. It’s worth trying again.”

“We can’t stay out in this,” Yusuf shivered as he spoke. “I can’t feel my feet or my face anymore, and my hands are frozen into c-c-claws.”

“I’m all for breaking in,” Eames looked at Ariadne, his eyes tightening. “You won’t do out here dressed like that for much longer. Your face is going from red to white, never mind Yusuf. We're all getting soaked below the knees and frozen from our scalps down."

“Don’t do this just because of me,” she forced out through her chilled lips.

“Believe me, Ariadne,” Arthur replied dryly, “this is as much for the rest of us as it is on your account. You’re just a concern because you’re smaller and you’re losing body heat faster, nothing else. Come on,” he layered his foil blanket over her head, then he and Eames powered across the snow ahead of Yusuf and herself, making towards the cabin at a steady march.

“I have become a human p-p-p-popsicle,” Yusuf said, his cheerful tone was ruined by his teeth chattering. He wormed one hand out of his blanket and hooked it around her upper arm, pulling her into his side, then they half walked, half tottered across the ground in Arthur and Eames’ wake.

When they reached the cabin door Eames was working the handle back and forth, shaking it experimentally. Arthur’s pack was on the ground, but Arthur himself had vanished.

“He’s checking the back,” Eames said before Ariadne could open her mouth. “Come on, you bastard,” he muttered to the door, twisting the handle viciously as he spoke. Metal squealed in protest as he kept turning it, and the door gave with a thump as Eames tipped over the threshold in a less than graceful stagger.

"There, nothing brute force couldn’t cure," he remarked with a smile as he straightened up. "Inside, now,” he flapped at them, peeling off his blanket and veering past the hobbling Yusuf to grab Arthur’s bag. “Take off your shoes, your socks and roll up your trousers if you can,” he added over his shoulder, then called out. “We’re in!”

Ariadne sank into the nearest seat, and began fumbling with numb fingers at her slacks, rolling them painfully slowly into clumsy bunches around her knees.

“I’ve got fuel,” Arthur answered, and a moment later he stamped through the door holding an armful of logs and kicked it shut.

“Eames, check the back," he jerked his head towards the rear of the cabin.

“On it,” Eames replied briskly.

"Yusuf, get all the blankets, quilts, anything you can find that we can warm in. Ariadne, go with him, see if you can find any clothes we can use.” Arthur dropped the wood in front of the stove as he spoke, reaching for his pack and the flint and steel. “Moving will warm you up,” he added.

Ariadne struggled with her boots, the sodden laces defying her fingers as she picked and pulled at them. She could feel her frustration mounting, and was on the verge of asking for a knife to cut them free when she heard shuffling across the floor towards her. “Here.” Arthur had moved to kneel in front of her. He moved her hands away, took her foot and put it on his lap, then calmly worked out the wet knot, loosened the laces and pulled her foot free and out with a damp sucking noise. He repeated his actions on the other boot, his head bowed as he worked. “Done.” He looked up at her with a dry smile. “It’s easier with warmer fingers.”

“Thank you,” she replied, grateful both for his help and his ability to bypass her frustration at needing it.

“Don’t mention it.” He inclined his head in a mock bow.

She peeled off her socks with a wet slap and wriggled her toes on the cold floor. They were red and mottled, tingling in the slightly warmer air, but she could almost feel them again, and for that she could only be glad. She checked her fingers, flexing and chaffing them to set the blood running, then she looked up and took stock of where they’d landed up.

She’d been too cold to notice much when then staggered inside, and the room had seemed to dim. But Eames had opened the drapes as he’d gone deeper into the space, and now it was clear that they were sitting in a large, main room with ceiling that followed the line of the sloped roof. Yusuf was propped on a large, overstuffed couch that faced the stove, massaging his feet and groaning to himself. She had fallen into one of a pair of armchairs to either side of it. A rich red rug covered the wooden floor between the chairs, and she scooted forward, sinking her toes into it with a sigh. Windows were spaced evenly down the side walls, and between them were bookcases filled to overflowing, a pair of deep wooden chests and clusters of pictures. Oil lamps hung at regular spots, and more stood dotted on any available flat surface. There was a dining table, old and scarred with use, pushed against the left hand wall and set with four chairs. At the back of the room was a small kitchen, pots and pans hung from hooks over a small hob, knives clung to a magnetic strip, and a small dresser of non perishables sat over the tiny sink, next to another holding mismatched plates, bowls and cups. In the far right corner the door leading out of the kitchen was open, and she could hear Eames rummaging around.

Between the kitchen and the living area, right in the centre line of the cabin, a pale wooden ladder with deep treads rose up from the ground level to a low mezzanine. She couldn’t quite see, but there was an edge of red and green patchwork trailing down from opening where the ladder joined the upper floor.

She brought her attention back down to the main room when the smell of smoke interrupted her mental cataloguing. Next to her Arthur had been blowing on the fire, coaxing it into life with scraps of wood and a piece of firelighter, and now he pulled back with a cough, slamming the stove shut and fanning the air around his face.

“I always forget they blow back like that when the chimney’s cold,” he muttered.

“I knew a woman once who did a trick like that.” Eames’ voice carried cheerfully from the kitchen. He had come back from his scouting with a large green can that he placed fastidiously in the sink. “I should hook you up with her, Arthur. Fifty quid and bring your own cigarettes.” He picked up the nearest lamp, unscrewed the reservoir and attached a small funnel, then cautiously began to fill it from the can.

“Did you find anything useful, Eames?” Arthur raised his eyebrows. “Or did you spend five happy minutes reliving that memory?”

Eames tutted in mock annoyance. “There’s a shower room, a toilet and a sink back there. No boiler, so I’m guessing the stove heats the water. The water wasn’t on, but I messed with the stopcock. Let’s just hope they invested in some lagging.” He screwed the lamp closed and picked up another. “No generator I could see, but the shower might have a gravity tank. The stove runs on gas bottles, which are outside. Other than that, some bulk packs of pasta, tins, and a pile of waterproof coats, which should come in handy. How’s that?” He closed the lamp he was filling and smiled sweetly at Arthur.

“Fine. There are no rifles back there, no hunting gear or anything?”

“Nope,” Eames shook his head. “We’re on our tods with that one, I’m afraid.”

From the couch Yusuf gave another groan, and pulled himself up, stretching his arms and rolling out his shoulders. “Anything warm?” he asked Arthur who nodded shortly, and turned to Ariadne.

“You need to move,” he said firmly. “The stove won’t be warm for another hour at least, and we need dry clothes if you can find any. Come on,” he chivvied her, waiting patiently as she stood, testing her feet.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, but the moment the words left her mouth she felt like a petulant child, bridling at having him pay her more attention in front of the others. Undoing her boots was one thing, but somehow having a conversation while being watched by Eames and Yusuf made her feel transparent, as if the things that had transpired between herself and Arthur in their dream were in their memories too, and now they were just waiting to see more.

“I never said you weren’t,” Arthur responded peacefully. “But you would have got colder than the rest of us, and that means you need to regain more heat.” He caught her hand briefly, rubbing her fingers and speaking in a softer tone as he carried on. “This isn’t about special treatment, this is about me making sure that you get through this. That we all get through this, OK?”

“OK,” she replied quickly, looking down at him as he smiled back at her. In that tiny moment, for the first time since she’d seen him again, a tendril of thought that she’d been hacking away every time they touched or shared a look coalesced into a twinning branch that coiled around her mind in a slither, hissing through her head the one thing she had been refusing to acknowledge: Is it you he sees when he looks at you, or his wife? And who do you see, when you see his face?

“Look out below!” Yusuf called and a pile of blankets landed with a soft whumph at the bottom of the ladder. After a moment three confetti bright patchwork quilts dropped on top of them.

“There are two queen sized beds up there,” Yusuf reported as he came cautiously back down the ladder. “A couple of chests with extra bedding, and one with clothes. I left that for you to investigate, Ariadne.” He bent over and began to bundle up the quilts in his arms.

“Thanks,” she remarked dryly. “I’ll start down here, if that’s all the same to you.” Yusuf smiled as he dropped the bedding on the couch.

“I take a size L,” he informed her helpfully, ignoring her good natured eye roll at the idea they might have a choice.

 

~*~

 

She searched all the chests on the lower floor, as well as on the mezzanine. The roof made the space triangular, with the low beds tucked in to the sloping sides and the chests at their ends, close to the edge of the floor. She threw down an armful of pants, t shirts and socks that she found in the clothes chest, then knelt down to check under the beds. They were freshly made, or had been before Yusuf stripped them down, she amended, groping into the space underneath them. The first bed had a box of sweaters packed under it, and another quilt, all of  which she dumped down the ladder, ignoring Eames squawking “Oi! Careful!” and Yusuf sniggering to himself. Under the second she found another box, this one holding a couple of thick down coats, and a smaller, inlaid one. She took out the small box, threw the coats down, then paused. The box was made of light, honey coloured wood with an inlaid thread of a darker one, circling it like the ribbon around a gift. On the lid, to the left of the line was an intricately rendered rose, it’s pale petals wide as one dropped from it, frozen forever in mid air. On the right, a set of five initials interwoven in a circle. She ran her finger over the lines of each letter, spelling them out as her heart sped up and her stomach tightened.

_D_

_M_

_P_

_J_

_C_

“Shit,” she murmured. Ariadne once would have puzzled it out on her own, digging in deeper than she dared. But that was the version of her that hadn't lived for twenty-five years in Limbo. Arthur, Eames and Yusuf had also lived out lives in Limbo in that length of time, and they likely had all been manipulated as well. They all deserved to know what was in the box; they could puzzle it out together.

Arthur and Eames were sorting the clothes she’d found, making piles on the table, and Yusuf was whistling in the kitchen, clattering pots and rummaging in the dresser.

“I’ve found something.” She took the box to the table, setting it down so they could see it. Yusuf came over, wiping his hands on a dishtowel as Arthur lent over it. “It’s Cobb’s, it has to be. This must be his dream.” She looked at Arthur as he brushed his fingers around the edges, then pressed his thumbs into one of the long sides, right over the dark thread. The lid sprang open as if freshly oiled, the scent of old roses and smoke leaking out. Inside was a black velvet cushion, and embedded in it in two perfectly shaped depressions were a gun, and a small silver spinning top.

“Fuck,” Eames breathed as they all stared down at the box. “So if it’s out here, where the hell is he? No one’s been here for a while, nor were they planning to be if the way it was left was any sign.”

“He said when he and Mal were here,” Ariadne put her finger out and touched the velvet, “she locked away the knowledge that it was unreal so she would forget, and could live in a place where infinite possibilities could exist without questioning them. We all kept our totems close, right? We all knew even unconsciously that we weren’t quite dealing with reality. What if Cobb decided that he didn’t care anymore? Dream, awake, it was all the same to him. So he put it a long way out of sight so he never had to think or question anything, just so he could carry on?”

“That presupposes that he put it here, and that this is his dream,” Yusuf frowned.

“It’s definitely his gun,” Arthur took it cautiously from the cushioning and turned it over in his hand. He ejected the cartridge and examined it briefly before he locked it back in. “Loaded,” he pushed the safety back with a snap, “It smells of gun oil, so it’s been maintained, not just left here. Safety’s been left off.”

Ariadne ran her finger around the lid lining, and finding a small ribbon tab, tugged it away. As it slipped out, a photograph fell face down into the box, revealing a pair of gold wedding rings nestled in the velvet. With gentle fingers she picked up the picture. It was Mal, Cobb and their young children in a sunny garden, sitting on a plaid blanket and smiling as if nothing bad would ever reach them. Mal was combing her hair back with her fingers, her blue eyes bright as she wrapped her other arm around James and Philippa; Cobb was gazing at her, the look of adoration so plain it was painful to see.

“It must be from before.” She held the picture out to Arthur, who stared at it for a long moment.

“I took that,” he finally said. “It’s from the year before she died.”

“These are theirs, then?” Eames tipped the box, looking down at the rings with a strange, almost blank expression. “How the hell can he be managing to bury so much out here?”

“He’s good,” Yusuf said, shrugging with one shoulder, “and this dream was designed to be as potent as I’ve ever tried to create. Infinite possibility, a mind that has worked in it before: He could do almost anything. If it’s him.”

“Could he manipulate us?” Ariadne fixed Yusuf with a hard stare, recalling her conversation with Arthur the day before; the cold dread of realising that her life could have been as much directed as desired.

“It’s not an exact process,” he hedged. “There are other factors to consider…”

“But could he? You know more about dreamers sharing space for long periods than anyone else here; you designed the formula that got us into this mess; and you can apply your brain to finding out why the hell we all ended up like this!” Ariadne ended in a yell, right into Yusuf’s wide eyed face.

“Alright, shall we simmer down?” Eames interjected smoothly as Arthur laid a quelling hand on her arm.

“I never thought it would come to this,” Yusuf shook his head, “I never thought he would— I had no idea—”

“You were blinded by the money,” Ariadne felt the words burn off her tongue. “We were all blinded by something. He manipulated us, with creativity, with loyalty, with money. You need to think about what he might have done, so when the time comes we can get out whether he wants to leave or not.” She pulled free of Arthur, forcing him to drop his arm, and snapped the box closed. Happy families were the one thing she couldn’t bring herself to look at right now.

“Are some of these clothes for me?” She asked Arthur, who looked back at her with an expression that barely flickered from his old, familiar neutral. The point man was facing her, but it was Arthur behind his eyes, she could see the minute tension and part of her rebelled against the comfort he might offer, the weakness he might encourage, the succour of a new illusion in place of the old.

“Yes,” he replied calmly, picking up a bundle that had been pushed aside and offering it to her, maintaining eye contact that made her want to flinch away.

“Thank you,” she returned with a prim nod of her head. “I’ll change upstairs,” she added, then with as much dignity as she could muster, turned on her heel and stalked away.

 

~*~

 

She took one of the down jackets and a pair of rubber boots from the mud room at the back of the cabin, and slipped out of the back door. The jacket compressed the oversized sweater and long sleeved t shirt she was wearing into a thick warm casing around her torso, trailing a few dark gold hairs from the hood when she pulled it close. Phillipa’s things maybe, she thought idly, plucking the hairs away. The slacks she had on bunched in the tops of the boots, and after a few steps her socks started to slip, but she ignored them with a stubborn flare of temper. She wanted space, even if just for a moment; a breath of aloneness to shore up her defences and get her equilibrium back. Arthur’s eyes regarding her with that hint of sympathy suddenly popped into her head, and she screwed her own closed, trying to make it go away.

She plodded around the cabin, past the lighted windows and set off in a straight line away to open space, back along the way they limped earlier. Their footprints were freezing into the snow now, crisp outlines blurring and crunching underfoot. Dusk was falling, the light going murky as the sky went hot bruise pink and fading yellow to her left, turning to indigo overhead, ragged strips of cloud peeling away to show the heavens above. She turned back, and the cabin floated in the dimness like a tiny boat, set adrift in an empty sea. She could just see the smoke describing a lazy smudge into the air, and inside Eames talking to Yusuf, their heads tilted together as they sat on the couch.

She stood still, her hands crammed into her pockets, the cold making her face tingle, until night had fallen; then she watched the stars start to peek out and a fingernail pairing of moon rise from the wavering line of the horizon, the cold light making the frost and snow sparkle. The quiet here was soothing against the stark beauty of the frozen world, not unnerving in the same way it had struck her in Eames’ and Yusuf’s forest. It was the cold, deep quiet of a cathedral or a shrine, the silence of stones and air all around. It sank in to her, and for a few moments she let herself go, tasting its metallic edge in the back of her mouth.

She had never been the maudlin or brooding type, even as she had matured past her impulsive twenties she still prefered to attack problems and think of solutions, rather than mull them over. But now, thoughts she had been holding at bay and refusing to entertain came crawling out of the lower recesses of her mind: Was she doing the right thing, trusting the directions of her own subconscious? What was going to happen? What if she was wrong, and they couldn’t leave or this was some pre death hallucination that came right before the white out, fade to black?

And what about Arthur? The thought slipped out before she could stop it. Comfort was one thing, the warmth of another body to cling to, a real body. But seeing him again was confusing her, making her think and feel things she felt no right to, and out of that came frustration with herself and annoyance with him. She also felt a toe curling teenage embarrassment at what Eames and Yusuf might be thinking about them. Then there was Lance, clinging to her image of Arthur like a shadow; her children’s faces, so like those of his; parallel dreams of half spoken desires and twenty five years to cross. She wanted to be sure, like she always had been before, but not even the silence could stop the swirling threads of thought in her head.

So she took a deep breath, and another, then a third; putting up the wall holding everything back in place. Each brick meshed solidly with its neighbour, no gaps or cracks where the light could seep in.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a someone coming from the cabin towards her. Even bulked with a thick jacket, heavy pants and gloves, his boots crunching in the frozen snow, it could only be Arthur. She recognized his tall, lean shape, his measured gait moving at a calm walk, no hurry or urgency, just coming towards her as definitely as a compass needle pointing north.

“Hey.” He stopped at a respectful distance from her, looking her up and down with a quick glance.

“Hi,” she said. A spike of shame shot through her for having lost her cool with him and everyone else before; the thoughts she’d just barred trying to claw back into her head. “I’m sorry.” She heard the words catapult across the space between them. “I’ve been a prickly bitch today. I took it out on everyone, but most on you. It’s just—”

Arthur took a few steps closer. “It’s OK. This is difficult, and stressful for all of us. It’s not wrong to want comfort, or ask for help. You’ve nothing to feel guilty about.”

She sighed, and suddenly she felt the twenty five years she’d lived since inception fall on her; a heavy weight that threatened to make her bow and crumble. Take it away, she heard a childish voice inside her whine. Make it just go away. Take me home.

His hands curled around her shoulders, strong fingers through the layers, a soft, sad little smile on his face. “I can’t do this alone,” he whispered. “I need you too. I need your help, and I want your comfort. Please,” he said gently, as she reached out to cradle his face in her hand.

It was wrong, she told herself, to care so much after so little time. To let words paste tissue thin walls across the seething doubts inside herself. But she wanted to, more than she cared what tomorrow might bring, or what it might mean.

His eyes moved from hers for a second, staring at the sky over her head, then returned to her with a full, genuine smile. “Look,” he turned her around carefully.

Above them shimmering ribbons of transparent green, yellow and red light were shivering across the night sky, glowing with unearthly brightness as they snaked above them.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed, feeling a stupid, stunned smile spread across her face. “The northern lights.”

“The aurora,” Arthur corrected with mock pomposity.

“It’s incredible,” she felt the fingers of one of his hands twine with hers. “I saw it at home, but never like this. It’s so—” the words trickled away.

“When the greatest heroes fall in battle the Allfather sends forth his messengers, the Valkyroir, the virgin warriors, to bring them to Valhalla. When they ride out, their shields and armour flash in the sun and reflect on the sky,” Arthur said in a soft voice. “They’re the sign of heroes going to their reward.”

“Where did you learn something like that?” She said with a foolish smile. Poetic Arthur was a whole other facet of him that she had never imagined might exist.

“School,” Arthur replied, then, a little cautiously he added, “I loved that kind of stuff when I was young.”

“What did you want to be, when you grew up?” She stared at the shifting lights, as if they were granting her permission to ask, to scratch away at his layers, to find the person who needed her so much.

“A soldier,” Arthur’s breath was warm on her scalp. “And you?”

“A builder,” she said without thinking, feeling his fingers knitted into hers. “And happy. I wanted to be happy.”

 

~*~

 

Yusuf had made a dinner of noodles with tomato sauce, and when she and Arthur got back to the cabin they sat around the fire, wrapped in quilts and ate.

“Look at us,” Eames sat back when he’d finished. “We look like an old people’s outing to the Arctic.” He looked around at them all. “It’s strange, I never thought I’d get old, or see any of you get old for that matter.”

“Speak for yourself,” Arthur dabbed sauce from his chin.

“Really? Come on, Arthur. How many old men, properly old men, do you know working in dream share?” Eames challenged. “I’m willing to bet it’s none. You have two choices, retire before you get addicted to somancin dreams, or get killed. Nobody makes old bones if they stay in the business.” He frowned at the fire. “Yet here I sit, looking like my damn father.”

“But we’re not in the business, are we? We all left it.” Ariadne looked around at them. “We did the Fischer job and never went back.”

“I have a theory,” Arthur turned to Yusuf. “Could Cobb have created a pocket of Limbo, acting as sort of super dreamer, influencing our dreams inside it as we created them for ourselves?”

“It’s possible, I suppose. Limbo is a raw space, unfettered and infinite. It has even fewer rules than a normal dream does, and they have precious few. How did you come to think this?”

Arthur set his plate down before he spoke. “Ariadne and I were both in different dreams, our own dreams apparently, before we found you. We noticed that we’ve all led very similar lives in certain respects. We all left dream share; we all married; we all had at least two children, a boy and a girl.”

“You got married, Arthur?” Eames laughed. “Dear lord in heaven, I would have paid to meet the woman who would be your wife.” Ariadne felt her spine stiffen as Arthur glowered at Eames.

“Well, I met the woman who was yours, and she tried to strangle you, so I don’t think that gives you any room to talk.”

“Are you saying that these choices indicate a pattern?” Yusuf cut across Eames attempt to retort.

“I’m saying they indicate a dreamer directing them. Cobb was married, with two children, a boy and a girl. He wanted to leave dream share and retire.” "There are other similarities, structural ones," Ariadne put in. "All the dreams I've seen so far have water running to the point in the dream space where the dreamer is. Cobb's original Limbo was bounded by water. An ocean. I think that maybe the water is a connection, like an umbilical cord to the centre of each of our dreams. An omphalos, a world navel for each of us, and they all connect back here somehow." "If that's the case, where's the water here? Unless the snow counts, of course." Eames asked. "Perhaps it's underground. Perhaps we're not at the centre yet. Perhaps it is the snow. It's symbolic as well as structural," Ariadne opened her hands as she shrugged.

“It certainly sounds like he’s an influence. I’ve heard of cases where in a group of dreamers, sometimes the more skilled dreamer can dominate, even if they are not directly creating the dream themselves. But why would he do it?” Yusuf frowned. “It would take effort, on his part. Surely if he knew he was here, he’d want to try and get out? Didn’t he say he was going to come back?” He directed the question to Ariadne.

“He did,” she nodded. “After he told his projection of Mal that he was letting her go, he seemed different. Like he had decided to survive to save Saito and bring him back too.” She let the memory rerun in her head, turning it over and trying to find the moment when she should have seen she had been wrong.

“So if we’re down here, in his private Limbo, how do we get out? Do we kill him?” Eames said blandly.

Yusuf shook his head. “He’d just stay down here, and if he’s exerting influence over us, our dying wouldn’t help either. We’d probably all wake up where we started. I think he’d have to want to collapse this whole thing. If we all die, there’s a chance we might get out. Except we’d have to rise through the layers already above us, with no kick.”

“How could we do that?” Eames raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t know,” Yusuf shrugged. “I’d have to think.”

“Wonderful,” Eames drawled. “Well, on that note perhaps we should get some sleep. Arthur, do you want to split watches?”

“Sure,” Arthur began to gather up the plates. “I’ll take first, unless you want it?”

“How very magnanimous of you, Arthur,” Eames ignored the filthy look Arthur gave him in return. “But I’m fine taking second. How are we sleeping?”

“In beds,” Yusuf yawned.

“You’re funny. I meant, there are two beds. Is one of us taking the sofa, or are two of us sharing?”

“I don’t mind sharing,” Yusuf gathered his quilts around him. “Ariadne won’t want you next to her, Eames. You hog the covers.” He smiled sweetly.

“Fine,” Eames said in a voice that could have killed at twenty paces. “Arthur, are you OK with that?”

Arthur’s eyes rested on her for a moment. “Sure,” he replied, glancing away to Eames. “Go to bed, I’ll wake you in a few.”

 

~*~

 

Ariadne woke up in the dark. Someone was trying to move quietly around the bed and failing.

“Eames?” She mumbled.

“No, it’s me,” Arthur’s voice came from close by. “Sorry I woke you.”

“‘s alright.” She pulled the quilt back. “You want to sleep with me?” She said drowsily.

“I’d like that,” Arthur hesitated, “if you’re sure.”

“Get in, Arthur, I’m getting cold,” she complained softly.

There was a rustle, then Arthur slipped under the covers, tucking them back down as she burrowed herself against his warmth. “Nice,” she breathed.

“Yeah, it is,” Arthur remarked, wrapping his arm around her. She lay there, curled into him, listening to him breathing, and the sound lulled her back into sleep.

 

~*~

 

The second time she woke up sharply, going from sleep to wake in a clear moment. The light from the window was hard and brilliant, making everything bleached and sharp edged. She turned over to look for Arthur, and found him dressed, crouching at the ladder opening with his gun raised in one hand. He heard the sheets rustle, and his head whipped around, a finger pressed to his lips. She nodded, and stilled herself. In the bed opposite, Yusuf was curled on his side, snoring and snuffling to himself in his sleep. Downstairs she could hear the floorboards creaking gently and the fire shifting and popping in the grate. Eames had taken the second watch, so he must be on the floor below. Had he heard something? Was someone else there?

Just as she was about to lean forward and get Arthur’s attention, she heard a noise outside. Heavy boots, stamping on the frozen ground as if knocking mud and slush from the sole. Arthur tensed, and she heard the lightest tread cross the floor downstairs. Arthur was fixated on the lower floor, his eyes narrow as he nodded to the unseen Eames. There was quiet, only broken by Yusuf’s murmurs of breath, then the door handle turned with a thick grinding noise. Boots clumped on to the wooden floor, the door swung shut, and Eames’ voice came up, clear and sharp.

“Stay right there.” The click of his gun chambering a bullet was like a whip crack. “Hands where I can see them.”

Arthur was down the ladder in a blur. “I’ve got you covered,” she heard him announce from below.

“Thank you,” Eames’ sock clad feet barely made a noise as he moved, only the boards protesting gave him away. “He’s an excellent shot, by the way. So don’t even think of trying anything clever, mate,” he said with false camaraderie.

Ariadne cautiously slipped out of bed, taking care to be quiet, and took Arthur’s position at the head of the ladder. In the room below Eames was zip tying the hands of their visitor together. The stranger was was dressed in a thick jacket, a knitted cap and scarf that from the back completely covered their head, loose dark pants and heavy boots which were smeared and spattered with snow, swaddled so thickly it was impossible to tell if they were male or female, broad or slight, dark or fair. Only their hands were visible, pale and slightly worn against the back of their dark clothes as Eames fastened them at the wrists.

“Turn around,” Eames ordered, and they shuffled in a tight circle to face the room. From the front their face was still covered to the eyeline with their scarf, sunglasses over their eyes and the hat meeting them at the brow; a blanked out face that betrayed nothing. Eames unzipped their jacket, pulled it open and patted around the person’s waist, up their back and then down their thighs. He rummaged in their pockets, removing a Swiss Army knife, which he pocketed himself, a set of keys and compass.

“Boy scout, huh?” Eames remarked, but the person didn’t reply. “Right, let’s go.” Eames took hold of their shoulder and walked them across the floor, pushing them with a hard shove down into the armchair she’d slumped in yesterday. Arthur tracked them, and as she watched the stranger’s head turned to follow him, fixing on him as they were forced to sit.

“OK, mate. Let’s have a look at you, since you’re not up for talking.” Eames’ body was blocking her view, but she saw the cap, scarf and glasses drop on the floor. There was a brief silence, then the sharp snap of Eames’ cursing.

“Fuck _me_.”

Then the stranger spoke, a low, scratchy male voice, dry and almost tired under the sharp tones, catching in her memory like a meat hook:

“So, Arthur, Eames; did you finally decide to try and kill me?”

It was the voice of Dominic Cobb.

 

~*~

 


	8. Chapter 8

~*~

She and Yusuf came down to the living area one after the other, to find the kettle singing on top of the stove as Eames made tea. Arthur was sitting watching Cobb, who was watching all of them with the same bright eyes she recalled from before, impossible blue and sharp even in his aged face.

“Yusuf,” he nodded to them, “Ariadne.”

She looked away from him quickly, glancing instead at Arthur who had his perfect point man face on; closed and expressionless, except for his eyes, which were tight at the corners.

“Tea, anyone?” Eames offered in a bland voice. “Before we begin?”

“I’m good,” Arthur said shortly.

“Not for me,” Ariadne shook her head.

“A small cup,” Yusuf relented as Eames glanced pointedly at him.

Cobb said nothing.

“So,” Arthur kept his steady gaze on Cobb. “What do you know about this? Why did you ask us if we'd come to kill you?”

“About what?” Cobb frowned. “I was _joking;_ you were acting so efficiently, as if you were expecting a mark _._ This is my winter cabin. My retreat. I come out here every year. I’m just surprised to see you all, especially here. It’s been, what?”

“Twenty five years.” Ariadne said in a stiff voice.

“Really? That long?”

“Oh cut the crap, Cobb.” Arthur snapped. “This is Limbo. What is the one thing we all know about Limbo? That it’s raw, unconstructed dream space and the only things that are here are the things left here by anyone who’s been here before. That’s you.”

“I have no idea-”

“Save it,” Eames cut in. “We’ve all checked out totems. Now, why don’t you explain what the fuck you’ve been playing at?”

“This is ridiculous. I retired from dream share. Arthur, come on,” Cobb pleaded.

“What did you do, Cobb?” Arthur got to his feet and towered over him.

“I don’t know what you mean,” his lips pressed together defiantly. “I don’t know what you all want, or what it is that’s happened, but I can’t-”

Inside herself, Ariadne felt something snap. Watching Cobb, shaking his head, denying all knowledge; after everything, it boiled in her chest and erupted out of her mouth.

“We’re all here because of you,” Ariadne snarled. “This is all about you, what you’ve done and what you wanted. You’ve kept us here for twenty-five years so you could live out this... this _fantasy._ ” She waved her hand wildly around the room

“If this is Limbo, it wasn’t just my fantasy,” Cobb replied softly.

“Oh no? All of us tied up in our happy ever afters that look so much alike? So much like yours?”

He looked up, and his pale blue eyes were curious. “They were alike?”

“Don’t you even try to pretend that you had no idea. You’re the one who had been here long before any of us had. You’re the one who risked us all to get back to your family and damned the consequences. You’re the one with enough ability and enough fucking ego to make this happen. What the hell happened when you went to find Saito? What the hell did you do?”

“I don’t—” he started to shake his head, looking around all of them.

“You _do_ ,” she leant forward. “Are you going to sit there and tell all of us we spent a third of a life down here, and that you have absolutely no recollection why? Do we have to spend another third trying to work it out so we can leave? This wasn’t for Mal, it can’t be for her, and it can’t be for your kids either. For some reason we got stuck down here, and instead of trying to help us you were quite content to let us stay and believe we were all fine and happy.”

“Were you?”

“Was I what?”

“Happy? You said you were happy. What did you leave behind, Ariadne?” His voice was soft and lulling all of a sudden.

“I _believed_ I was happy. There’s a difference.”

“Only in that you’re telling yourself that there is one after the fact. You’re choosing to tell yourself this is the lie, that you cannot live here; but the fact is that here you’re content and you’re loved, and those things are real enough to make you happy. The definition of reality doesn’t matter any more. ”

“Of course it matters! This is made up, this is life without all the shit that makes the good stuff worth it. If you can have whatever you want, what happens to you?”

“But you didn’t know that. You thought it was real for long enough that it became how life is. You still struggled, fought, felt pain, you bled and cried, didn’t you?”

“It was false.”

“Only now you believe it to have been. If we went back, we asked you,” he looked down briefly as he paused. Then his head rose, and he looked her straight in the eye. “On the day your husband asked to marry you, or the days your children were born; what would you say? Were you happy?”

“I would not—” She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up as he stared at her, the words clogging up in her throat. Suppress it, she yelled at herself, keep it back. “This is dream. You cannot live in a dream.”

“But there’s a part of all of you that wants to, still. There’s a part of you that remembers your life, and asks if you can really can just let it go. You did so much, you felt so much; it’s been so long,” he trailed off.

“No,” she snarled, but even as she said it she felt her memories rear up inside, pulling and dragging at her as she felt the quality of the air around her start to change.

_(It would be autumn in Paris, rain and flying leaves and the smell of wet stone;)_

“Shut up, Dom. You’ve said enough.” Arthur’s voice slipped past her, despite its sharp edges.

_(Lance would be in the kitchen, making coffee and humming along to the radio;)_

_Make it stop_ , she ordered herself, _for god’s sake, stop!_

“You remember,” Cobb murmured.

_(dark hair streaked with gray, straight shoulders and long lines, the narrow span of his waist,)_

“No, I don’t,” she insisted, as much to herself as to him.

_(dark eyes and long fingers. Turning around, smiling to her and saying her name—)_

She heard Yusuf whimper, a desperate noise like an animal in pain. “I can’t— He’s—”

“What are you doing?” Eames grabbed a fistful of Cobb’s hair and forced his head back, making him wince. “So help me, you _arsehole_ —”

_(“Ariadne.”)_

“Ariadne?”

The voice was so familiar it made her skin crawl. She turned, her entire body going cold, as she realised that standing less than two feet behind her, real and solid as any of them, was her husband.

“Lance,” she felt disbelief clutching at her brain as she fought back his image, every memory she had, urging herself to remember it had been fake, to suppress him.

“Well, what’s this?” he said smoothly, staring at her with the same ferocity as the moment he’d tried to take her totem. “What do have we here? Is this what you left me for?” His eyebrows rose. “One of these assholes?” He examined each man with sharp look, unfazed by the guns Eames and Arthur had levelled at him as he moved towards her. “Did you think I would let you go that easily?”

“You’re not real,” she forced the words through her clenched teeth.

“Stay back,” Arthur ordered him.

“Is it you?” Lance turned suddenly towards Arthur, his lip curling. “It is you. Look at you. You think you can protect her? You think she doesn’t doubt you? Or herself? There’s a reason why it’s was me and not you. There’s a reason why she can’t let me go. I never left her, or lied to her; and you would, and worse, because all you are.” He looked Arthur up and down. “What are you? A mercenary in fancy clothes. A criminal with a first class image. In the end you can’t be trusted, can you? Nice manners and thousand dollar shoes won’t change your nature, any more than a wolf trained not to bite.”

“You’re talking shit,” Ariadne ground out. “Get out of my head. Go back where you belong.”

“It’s not that simple, sweetheart.” Lance tilted his head and smiled at Arthur, who by now was glaring at him down the barrel of his Glock. “Do you really think that when she fucked you it wasn’t me she was thinking of the whole time?”

“You’re a projection,” Arthur sneered. “You’re nothing more than an illusion with a bad copy of my face.”

“I’m an illusion, am I?” Lance bared his teeth. “I’m the illusion she chose. I’m the illusion she loves. She’s only using you to make sure her doubts don’t take over. She has so many, don’t you my love?”

“Fuck you,” Ariadne spat, lunging forward to strike Lance in the chest. As she moved his left arm came round in a rapid sweep, his forearm deflecting her blow and his fist striking her jaw so hard she reeled to the right, staggering as her skull rang. She heard Arthur shout a warning to Eames just as Lance roared; a gun fired so close to her that she grabbed to cover her ears, forcing herself to turn around as there was a sharp blur of limbs, Lance cannoned into Arthur and sent  his gun flying wide with a side on blow to his wrists. Arthur hit the floor with a crack as he struck back with his knees and arms, Lance’s elbow driving at his nose and throat as he went.

Yusuf yelped suddenly, and from the corner of her eye she saw him bow forwards as a pair of  arms and legs wrapped around him, the arms clasping his throat as the heels drove into his stomach. A dark braid of hair fell over his shoulder as he clawed at the hands digging into his flesh and, as if she was crawling up his back, suddenly Radeyah’s chin drove into his shoulder, her teeth clamping around his earlobe as she shrieked.

“Fuck!” Eames spun around, trying to aim for Radeyah as Yusuf pitched back against the wall, trying to knock her away.

Arthur and Lance tumbled over in a crash of blows, and she could see blood streaks on the floor, on Arthur’s face, mottled skin and white knuckles smudging into a blur. Ariadne lurched forwards, skittering towards Arthur’s Glock as she slipped on the floor, her hands fumbling as she grabbed at it where it had fallen. Radeyah was screeching in broken pulses of sound over the hard thuds of flesh being beaten, slammed and crushed against the walls and floor, and she could hear Lance making a ferocious chest deep growl that grated in her ears. She straightened up, gun in her fists in time to see Lance drive a punch into Arthur’s groin and throw him off his abdomen where he had been seated, his hands choking Lance as his thumbs dug into his throat even as he sent Arthur down to the floor with a crash. Lance reared up, his fist connecting with Arthur’s face, splitting his lip over his teeth, reeling back and aiming at his nose as Ariadne powered forward, kicking Lance’s ribs as hard as she could, again and again as Arthur’s palm slammed into his chin, knocking his head backwards as his neck extended.

Ariadne swung her doubled fists into the back of his skull as he tilted, feeling the butt of the gun handle connect with a crunch as Lance cried out, Arthur flinging him down as he flailed at her, his elbow cracking into Lance’s jaw as Ariadne struck him  again, this time on the side of his head. As he fell she drove her knee into his chest, nearly tumbling over Arthur as he scrambled back to find his feet, landing herself on top of Lance with the full weight of her body behind her, grinding her knee and foot into him as she went. He landed with a crack, Ariadne somehow managing to keep her balance as she hit him on one side and the floor on the other leg, jerking Arthur’s gun up and into Lance’s face as she jackknifed upright, panting through her nose and feeling her jaw lock as she stared at him.

“Oh, is that how it’s going to be then?” Lance’s face was a mosaic of bruises, both eyes swollen in pulpy blue black sockets, blood pouring from his nose and down his cheeks, staining his teeth as he split a grin at her, his hands fallen in a pose of surrender. “You’re going to shoot me, Ariadne? Not let lover boy do the deed while you clutch your hands over your eyes?”

“If you think I’m too innocent to do it myself then you never really knew me. And if you’re the best I could think of to make me happy, it shouldn’t be a surprise to either of us that right now I certainly would.” She felt her lips twist with derision.

“And I had the audacity to think I meant something to you,” he scornfully. “I am the only version of him that can love you the way you want. You kill me, Ariadne, and you kill that for good.”

“You’re wrong,” she spat back. “I was wrong, and you are nothing more than a figment of my imagination.”

“Then kill me, if I mean so little,” he taunted. “Kill me right now.”

“I don’t need to.” She lowered the gun. “I made you. I can get rid of you.” She took a deep breath as Lance started to struggle, feeling back to the wall she had made in her mind. “This is how I kill you,” she whispered as leant over him, pushing the image of him in her head back as hard as she could, imagining her hand forcing into the image’s chest, clamping her fist around his heart as it pulsed slower and slower. “I take back what’s mine.”

Beneath her Lance’s breath rattled in his chest, his face going paler with each gasp as his struggles weakened.  “Ariadne,” he croaked, blood making his lips tacky as they peeled apart. His hands fluttered towards her, just as she mentally threw his image backwards, behind the wall, his squirming warm heart coming away in her hand as she slammed bricks, steel and razor wire between them.

Her knee thudded into the cabin floor as Lance evaporated beneath her. She sagged forwards, letting Arthur’s gun go with a clunk. The wall in her mind was rigid now, unyielding and impenetrable when she pressed her thoughts against it. As she lifted her head she almost felt its weight dragging at her skull, and she welcomed it. It meant she was in control, and nothing could be pried from her again.

She felt someone clasp her shoulder; glancing up she saw Arthur looking down at her. He had a gash across his nose, one across his lower lip, and one beneath his right eye; his left eye socket was red and swollen, and another cut glared over his left eyebrow. There was a smatter of darkening bruises on his jaw and cheeks. His knuckles were split in three places, and the backs of his hands were red and mottled. He’d mopped away most of the blood on his face, but  she could just see the traces of it colouring his skin.

“I’m good,” she said softly, passing his gun back to him. Arthur squeezed her shoulder briefly in response, then he raised his head and his expression hardened. He didn’t say a word, just strode across the room, straight up to Cobb and backfisted him across the face. Cobb reeled back in his chair, spluttering and gasping, his eyes wide as Arthur grabbed him by the front of his shirt and forced him to look at him.

“You do that again, and I will have no compunction about causing you an extreme amount of pain before you can take another breath.” Arthur’s voice was deadly calm and level. “Now, Dom. You’re going to explain yourself properly and fully; and when you’re done we’re all going to decide what to do next. What happened with Saito?”

Cobb sniffed, and a dribble of blood ran out of his nose. “You have no idea what I’ve done for you. I saved us. All of us.”

“Eames!” Arthur snapped. Eames rose from where he’d been kneeling on the floor next to Yusuf, who himself was slumped against the wall with livid scratches covering his face and hands. “Hold his shoulders,” Arthur pushed Cobb back into Eames’ grasp, his large hands clamping down either side of Cobb’s neck. Arthur drew his hand back and Cobb sputtered.

“Wait, OK? Just wait! I— I knew the kick didn’t work.” Arthur let his hand drop.

“How did you know?”

“Because when I found Saito we woke up too easily. It should never have been that easy to come up. We didn’t die. We just wanted to be back on the plane, wanted to be young again and we, we just were.”

“How did the rest of us end up there?”

“I have no idea,” Cobb winced as Eames’ grip tightened and Arthur’s hand rose again. “I don’t know, alright? You just were.”

“And then what did you do?” Arthur said coldly.

“If Saito and Robert didn’t wake up on that plane, or woke up brain damaged, we all would have been arrested at best, and at worst we all would have been fugitives and likely dead inside a year,” Cobb swallowed. “To begin with I thought it was reality. I thought we’d done it. By the time I realised it couldn’t have been that simple, checked my totem and seen— We’d been here for five years, maybe more. I had no idea how much damage might have been done to us by the somnacin, or even if we could come back, and I didn’t know how to find you, any of you.”

“So you just left us?”

“I did what I could, all right? I hoped to god that you were living good, happy lives like mine. I buried my totem out here so I wouldn’t cause anything to destabilise, and I made myself forget. If this was the last instant of all your lives, I wanted it to be full of the life you had always wanted. It was all I could give you.”

“That’s lovely of you Cobb, but I think you’re full of shite,” Eames leaned over and snarled into his ear. “I think it went a little more like this: You were so fucking scared that if you didn’t bring Saito back in one piece it would be bye bye to ever seeing your kids again, hello prison overalls and a comfy bunk in a cell block. When you realised that the kick hadn’t worked, you decided that rather than give any of us a chance to try and wake up, you’d hide us all out down here so no one would ask any questions and you could pootle about being super daddy, drip feeding us some saccharine happy ever after to keep us quiet until we all went _fucking_ lala, isn’t that right?”

“That’s not how it was,” Cobb shook his head.

“Oh no? What happens if you take the risk and Saito doesn’t wake up, huh?”

“You know what happens.” Cobb stared straight ahead. “I told you. We’ve been here so long now, there’s no way of knowing how much damage has been done to us.”

“No,” Ariadne got to her feet. “You and Mal were here for fifty years. The damage happened because she sublimated her ability to tell it was a dream and you changed her mind.”

“This isn’t the same! We’re much more heavily sedated, the blend is much stronger; I have no idea—”

“Yusuf?” Eames said firmly, cutting off Cobb.

“We’ve been operating at twenty percent higher brain function than normal somnacin stimulates over a longer than usual period of exposure. The risk of permanent brain damage is increased the higher the value of both variables, that much is true.” He stood up slowly and leaned on the back on the couch. “But we’re still inside the safe window. Once we go over thirteen hours consistent dose, things go downhill.”

“How badly?” Arthur asked.

“If we wake within an hour or so of it, most likely long term memory damage; dulling and loss of sensory processing; severe psychosis. If we don’t?” He shrugged slightly. “If we’re under long enough our heart rates would slow down and become more and more erratic. Our breathing would become incredibly shallow. The amount of oxygen in our blood would decrease, we’d go into shock, and then...” Yusuf closed his eyes and shook his head.

“ _Wonderful,_ ” Eames’ voice dripped with sarcasm.

“So what if we destroy this dream?” Ariadne turned to Yusuf. “If our theory is correct, and we were all contained inside a single dream that formed a stable environment, did you decide if could we kick everyone back up to waking by taking it apart?”

“Including Robert and Saito?” Yusuf made a noncommittal face. “It seems most likely that we are all contained in your dream, Cobb. If you can manipulate us inside it like you just did, you must be the one making the rules. But I still don’t know if killing you would wake them or just strand them here to start all over again.” He narrowed his eyes at Cobb as he stared at him.

“I vote we try blowing the whole shebang. If you make it out and they don’t, that’s your tough luck.” Eames smiled sharply at Cobb. “Arthur?”

Arthur looked at Cobb, who glared back at them all with a defiant tilt of his head. “If anyone needs to bring Robert and Saito back, it’s you, Dom. If you want to find them, you will. This is your Limbo. You can do what you want with it.”

“You trust him to find them?” Ariadne heard her voice rise.

“No,” Arthur replied. “I don’t trust him to do anything. But I’m not staying here to get my head fucked with anymore. You can stay if you want, Dom, or you can let us take this apart and you can try to find Robert and Saito on your way back. The choice is yours, but I’m not going to help you this time. I’ve done enough.”

Cobb’s face was frozen in disbelief as Arthur turned away from him. “You’re serious,” he said. “You’re actually going to leave.”

“Yusuf, do you have any objections?” Arthur pointedly ignored Cobb.

“It’s unpredictable, given our level of sedation. But if the choice is staying here then no, I’d rather leave.”

“Ariadne?” Arthur looked at her, his expression softened by a tiny degree. She hesitated, glancing at Cobb, who had turned his head down to stare at the floor. She once thought that she had understood him, and in that understanding she could stop him from doing harm to the others. Part of her still did, seeing through his exterior to the layers of guilt and hurt beneath, wanting only for him to rise above them. But now she also saw the manipulator, the selfish drive to save himself and have what he wanted writ large across their lives as well as his own. Dreaming could make you feel like a god, she realised that long ago. But now she found herself wondering when did the line blur so much that you actually started to believe that you were?

“Tell me you’ll find them,” she stepped as close to him as she dared. “Promise me like you did before, that that’s what you’ll do and that you’ll come back with them.” Cobb didn’t move. Eames made to grab his chin, but Ariadne put out her hand and forestalled him, then firmly took hold of Cobb’s face and made him look at her. His blue eyes had faded with age, but looking into them she hoped she saw the man who had finally banished Mal and been prepared to go back for Saito. “This is your doing. You can be responsible for it, you can destroy it and you can make it back.”

“I don’t know, Ariadne. I don’t know if I can.” He sounded older and more fragile than ever before.

“We won’t save you, Cobb. Only you can decide to do that. But you can bring back Robert and Saito. They never asked to be here, any more than we did. If you want to start to redeem yourself, you help them leave. Promise me.” She tightened her fingers. “Promise all of us.”

Cobb’s mouth worked silently for a moment. “I could stop you. I could stop this breaking apart, and you would never know.”

“You want to be happy? You wanted us to be happy?” she asked bluntly. “You’ll let us take the chance. Sooner or later, you have to let people decide for themselves and admit you don’t know best. Reality is cruel and unfair, but at least it lets you make your own choices and learn from your own mistakes. This isn’t living, Cobb. This is waiting to die while your real life slips through your fingers.”

He started to shake his head, but she stopped him. “I swear to you, that if you try and stop us I will come back, I will find you and I will finish you myself. Now, promise.”

Her eyes bored into his, refusing to break contact with him as the seconds ticked by, refusing to let the discomfort make her waver and look away. “OK,” he mumbled.

“Louder, please,” she said firmly. “I want everyone to hear.”

“I promise. I promise I won’t stop you and that I’ll find Saito and Robert.” Ariadne let go of him, letting his head drop back down, and straightened herself up.

“I have no objections,” she stated as she met Arthur's eyes.

“So how are we going to do this then?” Eames said over Cobb’s head.

“We create a shockwave that will collapse the layers above so we can come up through them without needing to destroy them individually,” Arthur hefted his backpack onto the table. “The levels above us will have weakened from the kicks we already tried, if they haven’t disintegrated already. We just have to punch through them and hope the sedation doesn’t hold us back. If this part of Limbo is suppressed at the same time it might just act to magnify the force we generate.” He started to rummage inside, pulling out a torch, the flint and steel, ration packs and a cooking tin to one side as he went.

”Not to be a party pooper, Arthur, but unless you’re carrying a ton of C-4 in your magic rucksack, how the hell are we going to create an explosion big enough?” Eames said.

Arthur worked a black case the size and shape of a tool box out of his backpack and set it down on the table top. "Aren't you  the one alway telling me to dream a little bigger? Take a look." He gave Eames a wry smile, and undid the lid. Ariadne edged closer as Eames walked over to the case and let out an appreciative whistle.

“Arthur,” he clapped him on the shoulder. “You've outdone yourself."

"What is it?" Ariadne peered around Arthur, and found the case was packed to the top with a brick red solid, stuck with a pair of metal rods connected to a bulky digital display with a mass of wires.

“Pentaerythritol tetranitrate and cyclonite mixed with a binding agent and a bit of dye, all held together in a plasticizer,” Eames replied. “Semtex 1A to you, madame. Useful in all your demolition and general area destroying capacities. There’s enough in this little box to take out a large dam, a bridge or an incey wincey cabin, should you be inclined. So, what’s the plan? Blow the house?”

Arthur shook his head. “We’ll blow the dream from the centre, where the water rises. That’s the middle, right? If you're here it's got to be close by.”

"How did you know about—?" He looked up, wild eyed for a second.

"It was me," Ariadne butted in, a brief moment of satisfaction in her heart at the look in Cobb's eyes "It's how you connected us all to you, wasn't it? Where is it? Underground?"

Cobb kept his head down as he nodded.  “There’s a cairn, behind the cabin, on the edge of the trees. Out of sight.”

Arthur picked up the box containing Cobb’s totem, removed the gun and took it over to him, dropping it in his lap, then he reached behind him and cut the zip ties on his wrists. “Take him outside,” he said to Eames as Cobb groaned, rolling his shoulders and flexing his hands.

“Upsy daisy,” Eames strolled over and took Cobb by his upper arm. “Grab your things, there’s a good chap.” He added sharply.

“I don’t need a guard,” Cobb bristled.

“Forgive us if we still don’t quite trust you.” Eames flung the door open. “Yusuf, give me a hand in case His Nibs decides to make a break for it. Which he won’t, if he has any sense.”

“Of course.” Yusuf took Cobb’s gun from Arthur and they crunched out into the snow.

“Are you ready?” Arthur touched her hand, and Ariadne turned towards him. He was holding the case in one hand, his Glock tucked in at his waist.

“I’m fucking terrified,” she admitted with a watery smile. “But I’m ready. I want to go back.”

Arthur cupped her cheek and smiled back. “Quick,” he said softly, “give me a kiss.”

She wanted to laugh, some idiotic part of her unable to hold back at the memory of the hotel, her dove gray suit, that damn couch and the waves of panic that he’d quelled the first time he’d asked that. Instead, she pushed up on her toes, lifting her face. Their lips met, a sweet touch like the one all that time ago; she realised now it had been hinting at more . An affection, a desire that there hadn’t been time to express or see before.

“We should go before they get suspicious about why we’re taking so long,” she said as they moved apart.

Arthur nodded, then carefully reached out and wrapped his hand around hers. Ariadne gripped back, unaccountably grateful all over again that he was offering comfort in her uncertainty. “Come on,” he replied. “Let’s get out of here.”

They walked out, into the blinding white of the snow and the sunshine and the sharp slap of the cold, around the cabin and towards the small clump of Cobb, Yusuf and Eames, a bright patch of colour in the monochrome world around them. As they got closer, Ariadne could see Cobb was looking down at the small, perfectly made hill of bleached stones they had gathered around. A small jet of water rising from it, trickling down over waves of ice that coated its sides. He’d placed the box on the ground, but she had no doubt his totem was in his fist and his wedding band back on his finger.

“Alright then,” Eames said dryly as Arthur set the case at the foot of the cairn, let go of her hand  and knelt to flip the lid. He couldn’t have failed to notice, and sure enough he was examining the two of them with a curious, appraising glance. “Gather round. How long are we getting, Arthur?”

“Ten seconds,” Arthur pressed a switch and the display jumped to four zeroes.

“Cobb, are you ready?” Ariadne looked at him.

“Yes,” he replied softly, looking at her with clear eyes.

“Everybody, get in close.” Arthur ordered as he flipped a switch on the side of the timer unit.

“Just for the record, I am not holding hands and singing _Kumbaya_ , alright?” Eames grinned at her as Arthur stood up and grabbed her hand in his.

“Shut up, Mr. Eames.” She shot back with a sharp smile as she clutched Arthur’s hand in return. On her other side she heard Cobb inhale deeply, his body tensing as the clock went from ten to nine to eight to—

“Yusuf,” she heard Eames whisper, “thanks for everything. It was brilliant.”

“Same to you, my friend,” came his quiet reply.

— _five to four to three_ —

Their surroundings wavered, the trees smudging and bleeding into the sky, the stones softening as the water melted them to the ground.

— _to two to one_ —

Arthur’s voice in her ear was a wisp of sound as their hands clenched tight.

“ _You_.”

— _to zero._

Noise and light and motion filled her head for one aching fraction of a second, an incredible searing hot pain of everything, rupturing all in one instant. She was a blossom of ripping skin, dislocating bone and tearing muscle, blood streaked and endless, her consciousness clinging on as she flew apart, whiting out in roar of static, then she was gone.

 

~*~

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Part II: The Red**

 

  
_**Hannibal:** Dreams prepare us for waking life._

_**Will:** It’s one thing to dream, it’s another to understand the nature of the dream._

( _Hannibal_ , 2.12: Tome-Wan)

 

Later, Ariadne would ask herself what she remembered about the time between the dream and wakefulness. She would try and bring it back, closing her eyes to find the darkness she half had in mind; thinking of the sensation; did she feel weightless? Was she standing, lying or sitting? Did she recall voices, calling her back; or did she see memories, her life flashing in front of her eyes like people often said? Was there a light, or the feeling of softness around her? Each idea would pass through her head, eventually being cast aside because the truth was, she realised, that once she stopped being a molten river of pain there had simply been nothing. No time, no matter or gravity, just a blank space, clean and plain and empty.

Into the space came a sound, a drip drip drip of noise pooling in her ears. Metallic, persistent and annoying, like an alarm clock ringing in the next room. She moved, and her body felt like it had been weighted with a cement body cast, resisting as she tried to drag and pull herself over, dragging in a breath that felt thick and made her head spin.

Something touched her eyelid and carefully peeled it up. A supernova of light burned into her eye, making her try to twist her head away, only for it to be allowed to close again, then the other eye opened.

“Equal, reactive, no constriction,” a woman’s voice announced from behind the light. “Her pulse is up, blood pressure’s increasing. Pain stimulus,” her eye closed and she groaned in gratitude, only to break off as a sharp pinch to her forearm made her jerk back.

“Don’t,” she slurred. Her lips and tongue stuck to the word, sandpapery and blasted dry around it. Her brain felt thick, as if she was a tiny person trying to work a giant puppet of herself down mile long strings.

“Responsive.” There was a pause, then a wonderfully cool hand rested on her shoulder. She could smell something like lilacs and grass, and warm breath tickled her ear. “Ariadne?” The woman’s voice was slow and deliberate. “Ariadne, can you hear me?”

“Uhhh,” Ariadne managed. Her nose was sore, burning from each in breath.

“Ariadne, I need you to open your eyes and speak if you can hear me.” The woman repeated firmly, her hand squeezing Ariadne’s shoulder.

There was a sudden shrill blare of noise close by that hit her ears like an explosion, making her wince and wish she could cover her ears. “We’ve got another, doctor,” a man’s voice called as the sound fell to a steady pulse.

“Who?” The woman’s voice was further away, but her hand stayed on Ariadne’s shoulder.

“Moss,” the man replied, just as the alarm sounded again. “And Eames.”

“Start response testing them immediately. Any change on Mr. Saito?” The woman asked.

“No change,” the man answered as the alarm blared a third time. “Amari,” he called. “

Get the others in here, and send someone to Fischer.” The woman ordered crisply. “Ariadne,” her voice gentled. “Can you open your eyes for me?”

Someone started coughing desperately across the room, and a new alarm sounded, low and bleating. “Emesis bowl!” Ariadne heard the man yell. “Now!” There was a squeak of shoes hurrying across the floor,metal rattling and a steady pulse of electronic beeps rising.  She could hear voices all around her, speaking in, urgent low tones, jumbling together in her ears into fragments of sense—

_—a low groan over to her left. “Mr. Moss,” the man’s voice said gently. “Mr. Moss, can you open your eyes?”_

_“Fuck,” a voice that sounded like Eames’ grated from the across the room. “Fuck,” the word broke off in a dry squeak._

_“It’s alright, Mr. Amari. You’ve been given activated charcoal. I need you to stay on your side”—_

She could feel the light on her closed eyelids, and the temptation to stay in the warm, red dark, away from her heavy, dried up body was huge. But she had to wake up, the memory rose up from the fog in her head, no matter what else, she had to do that.

Ariadne forced her eyes open. Her eyeballs felt scratchy and crusted in their sockets as she blinked, trying to bring the room and the woman into focus. Wherever she was was white, a suspended ceiling with recessed lights overhead meeting a white wall swam into clarity.

“Ariadne?” The woman asked calmly, leaning into her eyeline. Blonde hair in a neat chignon, blue eyes and fine oval face, oddly familiar as Ariadne fumbled to place her.

“The plane,” she rasped, and the woman smiled.

“Yes, I was on the plane. Do you remember?”

“Attendant?”

“Yes,” the woman nodded. “My name is Doctor Kohler, Ariadne. I’m a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist, and I’ve been supervising your treatment. You’re fully conscious now, do you understand?”

“Totem, please,” Ariadne insisted.

“Your personal belongings are quite safe. Especially that,” Dr. Kohler reassured her. “You can have it soon, but for now—”

“Where?” Ariadne interrupted. Panic was rising in the back of her throat in an acid knot, and she heard the beeping sound speed up.

“You’re in a private clinic belonging to Mr. Saito. You’ve been given treatment to counteract the somnacin and sedatives, and at the moment you’re receiving intravenous fluids to help hydrate and nourish you as well. You have a urinary catheter inserted, which might feel a little uncomfortable. I need you to relax and stay in this position for now while we take some blood, check your vitals, and make sure you have everything you need. Is that OK?”

“How long?” Ariadne forced the words out, groping towards Dr. Kohler’s hand with stiff, slow fingers.

“You’ve been unconscious for forty eight hours.” Dr. Kohler gripped her fingers as horror spiked  through the fog in  Ariadne’s head. “It’s alright. It’s alright,” she soothed when she felt Ariadne tense. “You weren’t exposed to the somnacin and sedative mixture in the PASIV for longer than twelve hours. You’ve been unconscious while we treated you—” The alarm wailed again, cutting her off.

“It’s Mr. Saito!” another woman’s voice called out urgently. “Mr. Saito, can you hear me?”

“Please excuse me, Ariadne.” Dr. Kohler put her hand down gently. “Sandrine, if you wouldn’t mind attending Ms. Porter? Note her GCS as fourteen, please; E four, V four, M six as of this time."

Ariadne tried to turn her head as Dr. Kohler moved out of her eyeline, but it felt as if a bowling ball was rolling around her skull. A young, curly haired woman with dark brown eyes leaned over her with a warm smile.

“We’re going to take some blood now, Ariadne, if that’s alright?”

“Some water?” Ariadne pleaded. Now she was coming back to her body she could feel her skin around her in a tight, scratchy layer, the distant itch of her feet and scalp.

“In a moment,” Sandrine promised. Behind her the noise was changing, more voices were coming in from all sides, some weak and protesting, some calmer and giving firm commands. She could hear Dr. Kohler, her tone anxious as she spoke.

_“Pupils are reactive, no constriction. Mr. Saito, I need you to open your eyes. Can you do that?”_

On her other side there was a distinctive male groan, and the agitated rustle of bed sheets.

_“Mr. Moss, could you please stay still?” someone protested. “You have an IV and a catheter that we cannot disturb— Mr. Moss, please.”_

“Ariadne?” She heard Arthur’s voice, crackly and rough around her name.

_“Ms. Porter is next to you, Mr. Moss. Can you stay still for a moment?”_

“Ariadne?” he repeated, his agitation becoming more evident. “Hear me?”

“Arthur,” she batted at Sandrine’s arm. “Arthur. I’m here.”

“Mr. Moss, what are you doing? Stay—” There was a crash, someone swore and she could hear a scuffling around his bed. With great difficulty Ariadne turned her head, trying to make the room stay still as she opened her eyes again. In the next bed, Arthur was being fussed over by a pair of male nurses. He’d somehow turned himself on his side, his left hand clamped on the bed rail as he pulled himself towards her, and in the process yanked himself free of some of his lines and monitors. His eyes were huge, searching over her face as he looked at her, heedless of the scurrying around him.

“Ariadne?” He said through cracked lips as they made to turn him on his back, gripping the bed rail for dear life. He stared into her eyes, desperate and resisting despite his weakened state. She pushed her hand out towards him, her fingers clawing at the air as if that would give her some traction. He’d made it, he was alive and somehow that made her feel safer.

“All right, on your back now please, Mr.Moss.” One of the male nurses took his shoulder and carefully began to move him. Arthur tried to shrug him off, but he was evidently too weak to do more than struggle.

“OK,” Ariadne tried to nod as she saw the fight in his expression. “‘s OK Arthur.”

“Made it?” His eyes locked on hers.

“Think so,” she managed.

“Eames? Yusuf?” He tried to lift himself up.

“Your colleagues are conscious, Mr. Moss.” Dr. Kohler’s voice interrupted him, coming to his bedside, calmly moving him back down with an efficient touch and turning his head towards her. “What you need to do at this moment is to stay in bed and let us do our jobs.” She gestured to one of Arthur's nurses then took a small flashlight from her pocket, shining it in Arthur’s eyes briefly.

“Saito?” Arthur asked as she leaned over him.

“Mr. Saito is coming around as we speak. He’s responded well to the treatment and appears to have suffered no ill effects. Reactive and normal,” she added to the nurse who was taking notes.

“Fischer?” Arthur tried as Dr. Kohler slipped a small, chunky pair of grey plastic jaws onto the tip of his index finger.

“Mr. Fischer is regaining consciousness as well. His vital signs are strong and he shows no signs of having suffered any ill effects at this moment either. And neither do you, you’ll be pleased to hear. Either of you.” She smiled slightly at Ariadne before turning back to Arthur’s nurse. “Mr. Moss is slightly disoriented, but mostly obeying simple commands,” she commented wryly. “GCS is fourteen; E four, V four, M six at two fifty four—”

“Cobb?” Ariadne broke in, and she saw the flicker of tension around Dr. Kohler’s eyes. A cold stone of dread pressed on her stomach; and at that moment she realised how much she’d been hoping that somehow Cobb had managed to free himself once and for all, to come through for all the things that he’d been striving towards for all the years since Mal died. Even after everything he’d done, some grain of her had wanted him to defy his own nature and rise up.

“Mr.Cobb,” Dr. Kohler paused, her face falling as she let out a long breath. “Mr. Cobb is still unconscious and has shown no change since he arrived here. We will keep monitoring him, and using all the interventions we can, but— He was in the anticholinergic crisis for too long, and the prognosis isn’t good if he remains in this condition,” she finished. “I’m very sorry.”

As she left them, Arthur turned his head towards Ariadne, resting his right cheek on his pillow.

“He didn’t stop us. He got Robert and Saito,” he said in a small, dry voice. “He made his choice.”

“What about his kids?” Ariadne watched Arthur’s face still. “He always said wanted to see his kids.”

“Sometimes it’s not enough to want to make it out,” Arthur replied slowly. “We were lucky.”

“Think this is real?” Her throat was drying out again, and just talking was scraping on the soreness that was already there. But she had to express the disquiet lurking in her head; after all, hadn’t she accepted her old life easily enough? God, would she ever be able to trust anything now without constantly looking for the flaws, the too good to be true’s, examining the casual mundane of the everyday until she fell down in exhaustion?

“I hope so,” Arthur gave her a thin smile.

“But if it’s not?” Ariadne persisted.

“We’ll leave,” Arthur moved his right arm, putting his hand out into the space between them as if he could touch her from so far away. “We know how. We can leave whenever we want.”

~*~

The first day Ariadne spent in bed was a strange mixture of exhaustion, frustration and a strong, irrational desire not to fall asleep, just in case she didn’t wake up again. Her body was weak enough that every small motion was effortful, even picking ice chips from a cup and putting them in her mouth; the blissful feel of moisture on her tongue and in throat the only thing that made her persist. Being so helpless almost made her want to kick and scream with childish rage, and more than once she had press her face into her pillow to let the choke of angry tears subside. It was pointless to be upset, she reminded herself. She was alive and awake, which was more than could be said for Cobb. In all the time she’d spent preparing for the job, right up to her insistence that she had to accompany them into the dream, never once had she given more than a passing thought to the risks she might be taking. It had been made so normal to hook herself up and go under, the PASIV had seemed so benign to use, that the idea it could be dangerous or even addictive had only been a vague threat, embodied more in Cobb’s unwillingness to let his past go than the notion of exposure to powerful drugs. But now it loomed all too large; a barely avoided death rather than a lucky escape.

After an eternity of having blood drawn, her IV tweaked and a variety of tests involving needle pricks to her hands, arms, legs and feet, Sandrine had set her bag on her bed and helped her rummage through her clothes to find her totem. When Ariadne felt the familiar shape in the pocket of the slacks she’d worn on the plane, Sandrine had carefully pulled them to the top, peeled the pocket open and held Ariadne’s elbow as she grasped the cool metal of her bishop in her fingers. The relief washed through her in a soothing wave and a hard knot of tension she’d barely realised she’d been holding dissolved in her chest, her eyes closing as she breathed it out. The tight curves of the bishop’s head and body bit into her palm as she closed her fist, feeling the hollow space she’d carved out of the base with her little finger, the cursive A she’d added catching against her skin in a friendly scratch.

She opened her eyes again to find Sandrine watching her closely.

“OK?”

“Yes,” Ariadne brought her fist to her chest, clutching her totem against herself.  She caught Arthur’s eye, and he nodded slightly. “May I have some privacy, please?”

“Of course,” Sandrine removed her bag, then without prompting moved her overbed table back, putting it as close to Ariadne as she could manage. “I’ll be back shortly,” she added as she whisked the curtains around the bed closed.

Ariadne waited, listening to Sandrine’s footsteps tap away from her. The ambient noise of the room was lower now; monitors still beeped, people still came and went, but the air of urgency was gone. She could hear Yusuf snoring across the room, and Eames rattling his cup of ice. Further away were the hum of the machines maintaining Cobb, soft hisses of air going into his lungs, and the slow, steady beat of his heart marked in a persistent electronic pulse. Saito was murmuring something to the aide who’d arrived at his bedside half an hour before, and for a moment she thought she could hear rain falling outside in a steady pit-pat.

She put out her hand and awkwardly set her totem down on the table in front of her. It stood there, bright and out of place in such antiseptic surroundings. All the scratches and pock marks she recalled it having in Limbo were gone; and only a few hair fine lines marred the surface. She stared at it for a moment, tracing her fingers down its side. For twenty five years she’d relied on nothing more than her own willingness to accept a reality, and all it had taken to destroy that was a moment like this. One tap, and she would know for certain if this was real, or if she had to rise up from her bed and destroy it all again. The idea of that almost made her hesitate, the effort and exhaustion had been so great— She shut it off hard. No, she had to know.

She moved her hand back, grit her teeth and, with as much force as she could muster, pushed at the bishop’s head.

It fell straight down and hit the table with a thunk. No complex loop de loops. No hesitation or teetering on its edge. Just a simple tip over on to its side and stop. She felt her eyes close again, the breath she’d been holding whooshing out of her in a rush as she slumped back on her pillows. The relief was so strong now she could almost taste it, every muscle in her unwinding and all the tears she’d been holding back threatening to rise up again. OK, she told herself, once more. Make sure. I want to be sure.

Ariadne set the bishop back up, and tried again, then again, each time watching it fall, examining it as it dropped, each time feeling the small burst of reassurance it brought get stronger. Reality, cold, hard, wonderful, beautiful reality.

She fell asleep with her totem in her fist, clutching it to her chest as she’d once held her dream children; close to her skin and next to her heart.

 

~*~

 


	10. Chapter 10

~*~

In the next three days, Ariadne discovered quite how boring being in enforced rest was. While she would be the first to admit she enjoyed lie ins on weekends, the occasional day where she stayed in her pyjamas and watched movies from the comfort of her couch or the luxury of spending time with an undemanding novel, a pot of coffee and a box of pastries from her favourite patisserie, being made to stay lying on her back, connected to machinery by any number of tubes, wires and plastic attachments was somewhere close to her idea of hell. Her body refused to regain strength fast enough for her, and while her mind felt clearer and sharper with every passing hour, her limbs remained sullenly uncooperative, tiring easily and aching as if she’d run a couple of marathons. All that she could do was watch TV, use the internet if her arms would let her use her hands long enough, and talk to the others when they weren’t sleeping or being attended by their even tempered, efficient nurses.

Cobb’s bed remained shrouded in its curtains the entire time. Every so often Dr. Kohler or a pair of the nursing staff would vanish inside, and she would hear low voices taking vitals, murmuring “GCS remains 4; E is one, V is one, M is two—” then mentioning adjusting this dose or that. Ariadne would watch the silhouettes moving around him, half of her desperate to know what they were doing, the other refusing to consider it. If she hadn’t made him promise, would he be conscious now? If they had let him collapse his Limbo then blown the dream, or treated him differently, or even stayed with him?

Arthur caught her examining the curtained bed on the second day. He was propped up next to her, looking as dishevelled as she’d ever seen him: he had stubble growing in on his cheeks, his hair had been hastily pushed back from his face and his face looked gaunt and yellow tinged against the crisp white of his sheets.

“What are you thinking?” His voice was still rusty.

She turned her head too fast to look at him and the motion made her feel nauseous for a second. “That we could have avoided this,” she admitted. “He could have avoided this.”

“He was deeply entrenched in Limbo, Ariadne. He was the basis for the whole environment. His psyche was exerting a huge amount of energy and control.”

“Are we discussing Cobb?” Eames’ sounded far stronger than a man laid up in bed had any right to do. He was sitting up, the newspaper he’d been reading unfurled across his lap; his usual stubble approaching a full beard and moustache, and despite his pallor his eyes were bright. “If we are, all I can say is he had more issues than a back catalogue of Time magazine, and that being the case, it’s not all that surprising he won’t wake up.”

“But he was so—”

“Certain he could do whatever he wanted?” Eames interrupted. “Egocentric? Full of himself?”

“I was going to say determined,” Ariadne replied sourly. “He knew Limbo better than any of us, surely that helps?”

“Not always,” Arthur said as Eames pulled a frown. “Sometimes that familiarity makes it harder to go in and come back. It was dangerous for all of us, but always more for him because he’d spent so long there before.”

“So what about us now? If we dream again and get stuck down there, do we end up like him?”

“Not necessarily,” Arthur hedged. “We created our own spaces, but we were...”

“Encouraged,” Eames offered, and turned a page of his paper. “Encouraged by someone who had the brass neck to think he was doing us a favour by playing Omnipotent Lord and Creator. You know, Arthur, I’ve always wondered why the hell you stuck with him with all that crap he dished out.”

“He’s the best there is. You know that.” Arthur made a “you’re an idiot” face.

“I would agree. But there was making a fuckton of cash, and then there was being treated like his personal punchbag, whipping boy and nursemaid for the sake of it. Everyone heard about the shitstorm he put you through with Tyler, and then with DeSoto. Cobol was just the latest. You’re a smart guy, Arthur, except when it came to Cobb. Let’s face it, one false move on one of his previous headfucks and it could have been you over there.” He tilted his head towards Cobb’s bed.

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “Sure, we’ll discuss it. Right after we discuss why your wife down there looked just like Mal,” he said with deadly calm.

Eames’ face froze. “It would seem we’re both hitting nerves today,” he replied coldly. His eyes flickered over Ariadne. “But I wasn’t the only one who wedded myself to a familiar face, now was I?”

Ariadne felt her lip curl. “You can leave me out of this.”

“The problem is, darling, that I think you two bound yourselves up in each other down there. Arthur’s predisposed to his rescuer complex and you fell for his schtick as easily as a blushing ingenue. You pair dreaming together now could be just as dangerous as Cobb was, unless you get a hold of yourselves.”

“When I get out of this bed I am going to fucking break you,” Arthur snarled, his heart rate monitor speeding up in an agitated burst of noise.

“It’s the truth and you know it, Arthur.” Eames' lips curled into a thin smile. “You can’t take dreams into reality, mate.”

“You’re naive if you think that we would,” Ariadne spat, ignoring the stupid clutch of anxiety in her gut. Since she’d regained consciousness she’d worked to distract herself from thoughts of Lance or Aisling and Carl; and barely allowed herself to touch on what she and Arthur had shared. But then, being in medical unit surrounded by others was hardly conducive to trying to discuss something like that; nevermind her own desire for privacy, her own feelings on the matter were still a thicket of thorns and choking branches.

Eames raised his eyebrows, mocking them with false surprise.

“In that case, I apologise.” He replied mildly with a bow of his head, then he reached across and pressed the staff call button. “Forgive me for thinking of your future as well as mine,” he added sweetly as his nurse arrived. “I’d like to rest now, please.” He shot them both a sharp eyed glance as she nodded, and drew the curtains around his bed.

“Shithead,” Arthur hissed, loud enough to be heard by Eames across the room.

“Does he have a point?” Ariadne asked softly.

“That depends,” Arthur turned his head to look at her, his inscrutable mask only broken by a softness in his eyes.

“On what?” She saw him part his lips, a word stopping there and quickly being swallowed.

“We should talk about this in private,” he whispered. “It’s between you and me, not everyone in this room. He was forcing the issue because he’s bored, and when Eames is bored he likes to fuck with people.”

“But he said—”

“I heard him, believe me. But you have to trust me; what he’s implying is a matter for us to deal with. He wanted to rattle us and see what happened. It could be just as much of a risk for him and Yusuf to dream together again for just the same reason.”

“They were in the same space because they’re emotionally close?”

“Friendship; romantic relationship; family; they all have an impact on our dreams unless we handle them properly,” Arthur said shortly. “We will discuss this. But not here, and not now.”

“What if I want to?” she shot back.

“Ariadne,” Arthur murmured. “Don’t let him get under your skin. This is between us, and we’ll deal with it between us.”

Ariadne felt a knot in her throat at the word us. Was there a them with a future in dreamshare that needed to be resolved? She felt her future looming up in front of her, all the questions that her own personal Limbo had raised hanging there in giant question marks. The agitated, restless part of her prodded and wriggled, demanding answers, wanting to press the issue; but somehow she knew that if Arthur didn’t want to talk, she was never going to make him.

“OK,” she acquiesced. “I’ll hold you to it.”

“I’m counting on it,” Arthur smiled wryly, but before she could pry that answer open any further one of his nurses arrived and with an apologetic smile to her, closed the curtain between their beds.

 

~*~

 

The days began to take on a repetitive quality. She would wake, check her totem, be given water; have a bed bath and the bag her catheter was draining into changed; have blood draws then tests of sensation in her limbs and torso; check her totem; Dr. Kohler would visit her, asking her various questions about where and who she was; she’d check her totem, then watch movies with it clutched in her hand until it was time to have her vitals checked; Dr. Kohler would visit again; she would check her totem, and so on.

Her sense of time passing was measured in the small changes in the routine: After three days Sandrine gave her a pale pink nutrient drink along with her usual morning glass of water. Ariadne had eyed it dubiously, her stomach had neither asked for food or rejected the water she’d been drinking since waking. She had no strong desire to throw up quite so energetically as Yusuf had on his first day after all. But on taking an experimental sip it turned out to taste no worse than a diluted strawberry milkshake with a slight metallic aftertaste, and it made no attempt to come up again once she’d finished it.

On seeing her empty the cup Sandrine had positively beamed.  “We can drop your nutrient IV tomorrow if you keep that up.” After that she went from three, gradually up to six drinks a day, as her IV bags shrank in direct proportion.

Strength in her limbs came back with halting progress; the day of her first nutrient drinks gave her a burst of energy that roused false hopes, by the next day she was aching and tired again, her older self apparently manifesting familiar pains in her knees, shoulders and back.

On the sixth day after waking Ariadne was digging into the first solid food she’d been allowed, a bowl of thin oatmeal, warmly milky and sweetened with applesauce. She’d woken up hungry for the first time since they’d been here; she also thought Sandrine might be spoiling her after having to endure the removal of her urinary catheter before being bathed. She had grit her teeth as her legs were arranged in a splayed position and reminded herself she’d given birth, before shaking the thought loose and replacing it with recalling her pap smears instead, trying to ignore the cool touch of gloved fingers and the insistent pull of the tube coming free from inside her.

“You’re doing well,” Dr. Kohler said reassuringly. “You should have heard what Mr. Eames said when his was removed.”

Ariadne snorted on an unexpected laugh at the memory; Eames had had his catheter removed earlier, and she had never heard him swear so suddenly or in that high a voice, and doubted she ever would again. As she did so there was a final tug between her legs, and the catheter slithered free.

“Excellent, that wasn’t too bad now, was it?” Dr. Kohler dropped it into a bowl and patted her knee. “Old trick; Laughing makes you breathe out and relax, so it makes things like this easier for all of us.”

She was sitting a little awkwardly, still feeling tender and trying to distract herself from it with her cereal, when she heard Eames take a sharp breath in. She looked up, and saw him watching the TV above his bed with hard eyed scrutiny.

“Well, well,” Eames said dryly. “It looks like we’re about to be on TV.”

Arthur’s head jerked up from the book he had propped in front of him. “What?”

“CNN,” Eames glanced across at him. “Saito’s giving a statement. It explains why they took him away at the crack of dawn if nothing else.”

Ariadne looked at the neatly made bed to her right and frowned. “He going to give a statement? Surely he’s still too sick. Why not send a spokesman?”

Arthur was flicking through the channels on his TV as he replied. “For the appearance of it.”

“I don’t understand. He’s going to show up, weak and frail in front of the world and his competitors, and say— what is he going to say?”

“The heads of two of the world’s largest energy companies take a commercial flight from Sydney, and on route are taken severely ill, severely enough that they’re comatose for two days and still recovering. I’d say that’s what he’s going to talk about, at a guess.” Eames’ tone was laced with sarcasm.

“I get that,” Ariadne replied deliberately slowly. “But there’s been nothing on the news.”

“Nothing much,” Eames emphasised the last word. “A short press release the day it happened, bit of a flurry, then I suspect they were made to dial it all down until Saito was up and about.”

“And if he hadn’t been?”

“I expect it would have been dealt with as neatly as everything else.” Eames shoved a mouthful of oatmeal into his mouth and chewed, plainly signalling he had finished talking.

Ariadne turned on her TV, scrolling through the news channels until she found CNN. The image on screen flicked to a man and a woman seated side by side at a desk. Projected between them was a large graphic reading _**Energy Crisis?**_ in dark red letters, superimposed over the top of the logos of Fischer Morrow and Proclus Global.

“Further to our top story,” the woman said in an urgent voice, “we’re hearing that a Proclus Global spokesman will be giving a statement in just under two minutes time, live from the clinic in Sonoma County where all the victims of what's now being called the Pangea Air Poisioning are being treated. As we’ve reported, Kintaro Saito and his now main rival, Robert Fischer were both taken ill on a flight to Los Angeles late last week, and have been treated at the private medical facility since their arrival in the USA. This has led to some speculation as to a suspected terrorist plot to destabilise the world energy market, with some commentators indicating Soviet or Middle Eastern interests in play. There have also been unsubstantiated rumours that all the victims were poisoned with a polonium isotype, known to bee freely available from black market sources. Mark?”

The male anchor nodded, his classically handsome face sombre as he took up the story. “Thank you, Melissa. Mr. Saito, Mr. Fischer and the other five first class passengers from flight PA 849 were taken to a clinic east of Berkeley, California via medical transport after cabin attendants raised the alarm on board. This came just days after the death of Maurice Fischer, co-founder and head of Fischer Morrow. In an earlier short statement, Proclus Global confirmed that both Mr. Saito and Mr. Fischer were receiving treatment and that both men were expected to make a full recovery. Meanwhile Peter Browning, acting head of Fischer Morrow, gave a brief press conference expressing his distress at being unable to leave Sydney for Mr. Fischer senior's burial or to visit Mr. Fischer junior, due to recent events.”

Footage of Peter Browning in front of a cluster of microphones was cut in, his face overlit, making him look older and more exhausted than he must actually have been.

“This is a difficult time for everyone at Fischer Morrow,” he said in a low, steady voice. “Robert was of course heartbroken at the loss of his father, as were we all. The news that Robert has been taken so ill is a double blow at a time when we most need calm and stability.”

“Will you be the one to provide it?” a man yelled. “Haven’t you been more of a father figure to Robert than Maurice?”

“I am a good friend of Robert, and I was a good friend of Maurice. I will be doing everything I can to support Robert at this difficult time.”

Eames snorted. “Protecting your own arse, more likely.”

“Do you believe this was an attempt to take advantage of the power vacuum left by Maurice’s death?”

“Mr. Fischer,” Peter Browning said with quiet venom, “was a great man. As is his son. There was no vacuum to take advantage of.” He turned away as more questions were clamoured at his back, while an aide yelled no further comment over them all.

“Peter Browning has been made temporary chair of the board of Fischer Morrow until Robert Fischer is well enough to resume his role. We’ll have more comment on that after the statement, and I’m hearing that we’re going to cross live to the clinic shortly?” The male anchor turned to his female companion.

“Yes Mark, we’re also hearing that the statement will be given by Kintaro Saito himself, not a spokesperson as previously mentioned. Let’s go live to that press conference.”

The scene changed to a low dias, backed by a blonde wood panelled wall and flanked on either side by a pair of large, blue and white floral arrangements. In the centre was a single microphone, and as they watched a pair of double doors at the rear of the small stage opened. Saito sat in the centre of the doorway in a wheelchair, dressed in a grey suit with a dark blue blanket tucked across his knees. As his aide wheeled him to the microphone it was clear he was still unwell, looking gaunt and pallid, his shoulders rounded and his head forwards, his hands folded in his lap. An IV bag hung on a stand from the back of his chair, and the entry on the back of his hand was highlighted with a stripe of white tape.

As his aide stepped back, Saito cleared his throat in the quiet, a rasping sound that echoed around him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a weak voice, “I am speaking to you today to pass on the news that both Mr. Robert Fischer and myself are recovering after we fell ill on a journey we were both taking to Los Angeles; Mr. Fischer to inter his father, and I to attend the service being given in Mr. Fischer senior’s honour, where I had hoped to offer my heartfelt condolences for the family’s loss. During our flight, we and our fellow first class passengers were exposed to a neurotoxin, which both my own investigations and those of the Los Angeles police believe to have been administered in via the drinks service prior to take off. We were fortunate that due to the rapid actions of the cabin staff and airline crew we received medical attention in time to save our lives.

"While I cannot comment on the ongoing investigation, the evidence at this time strongly suggests that the intended target of this poisoning was Mr. Fischer himself, yet it managed to injure not merely him and myself, but five innocent passengers in the process. This is an act which I condemn and abhor, and I shall do everything in my power to ensure its perpetrator is brought to justice.

"While I cannot speak for the heads Cobol Engineering, I can state that I will be offering Mr. Fischer any further help and guidance he needs at this difficult time, and to that end I will be proposing a global energy consortium between Mr. Fischer and myself to reassure all our partners that our companies and supplies are secure. Thank you.”

The aide stepped forward and took the handles of the wheelchair as a crowd of voices began to clamour:

_“Mr. Saito, do you have any comment on the investigations into the involvement of Cobol Engineering?”_

_“Mr. Saito, is it true that Cobol have been maneuvering to buy large portions of Proclus and Fischer Morrow stocks?”_

_“Mr. Saito, have you spoken to Mr. Fischer about his long term plans for the future?”_

_“Is it true one of the passengers is still in a coma?”_

Saito merely sat with his head down, vanishing behind the double doors again, and then the camera cut back to the studio.

“Well, Melissa, as you heard there the shocking revelation that this was a targeted attempt on the life of Robert Fischer. This throws the ongoing investigation into the activities of Cobol Engineering into a whole new light. As we’ve previously reported, in the last week documents have surfaced indicating that Cobol Engineering has been making attempts to break into the lucrative energy sector with very little success. Could they have resorted to the ultimate in dirty tactics? Let’s cross now to our senior business correspondent-”

Ariadne hit the mute button on her TV, leaving a clean cut looking blond in a shiny suit to speculate in silence. When she checked, Arthur was lying back, a slight smile on his face; and when she looked across at Eames he was smirking to himself.

“What?” She asked.

“What you have just witnessed was a master class in taking advantage of the situation, Ariadne,” Eames’ smiled deepened. “Saito just managed to set himself up as Robert’s new confidante, smear Cobol and look like a courageous victim all in one go, while gently deflecting suspicion from himself and us. That’s on top of knowing that he’s now predisposed Robert to do the very thing he wants him to. After all, having undermined Browning and stuck him in Australia, who better to hold Robert’s hand at his bedside and listen to all his new hopes and dreams? Two survivors of the aggression of a murky rival, clinging together as they recover,” Eames punctuated with raised eyebrows. “My god, if he ever goes into politics we’re all in trouble. He’s slicker than teflon coated ice.”

“So he had this planned all along? Cobol being investigated, the energy consortium, stranding Browning?” she frowned.

“I expect he had parts of it ready,” Arthur said slowly. “The Cobol documents and investigation sound like they were designed to spook Robert towards Saito if he woke up suspicious that he’d been subconsciously attacked. The Browning issue might be genuine, after all, someone has to run Fischer Morrow. But it does seem to be falling Saito’s way, I agree.”

“Come on, Arthur. Wheelchair, shaky old man voice, taking care of all the victims? He’ll make hay on just that for months.”

Yusuf stirred in his bed at the noise. “Whas going on?” he mumbled from his pillow. “Whas the matter?”

“Ah, Sleeping Beauty awakes,” Eames remarked dryly. “Up and at ‘em, old man. You’re missing all the fun. Saito just did his best doddery act for the world’s media and turned your magnificent work into a case of neurotoxin poisoning.”

“‘m sleeping.”

“Yusuf, you’ve spent more time asleep in the last few days than anyone except Cobb. Wake up!” Eames aimed his newspaper at the top of Yusuf’s head, only to be met with a raised middle finger.

“Tired,” he groused. “Older than you. Need more time to recover.”

“Bollocks you do. You’re just taking advantage of this little holiday.”

“Leave him be, Eames.” Arthur had picked up his book again and didn’t raise his head when he spoke. “If you want something to do, ask one of the nurses if they have a million piece jigsaw.”

“God, this is worse than boarding school,” Eames sighed dramatically. “With the exception of your presence, Ariadne, this is like being trapped in a dorm of overgrown teenage boys all over again.” He looked pointedly at Arthur, who was apparently engrossed in his copy of _Kafka On The Shore_. Ariadne felt a twinge of envy; despite improving, her brain still fogged after an hour with anything more complex than a _Discworld_ novel.

Eames was jabbing his staff call button, muttering to himself darkly about _f’ing jigsaws_ , when Dr. Kohler arrived, a bright smile on her face.

“Good morning,” she addressed them all from the door, looking them all over. “Are you all well?”

There were three yeses and a mumble from Yusuf.

“I have good news for you. Since you’re no longer in need of urgent care, we’ll be moving you to private rooms today. They are ensuite, and they should be a quieter. The nursing staff will carry on attending you, and I shall begin the next stage of treatment once you’re settled. Is that OK with everyone?”

Ariadne nodded. She didn’t trust herself to look at Arthur, but from the corner of her eye she saw him glance her way.

“That seems unusually attentive, given the treatment we’ve already had,” he said.

“Mr. Saito insists that we oversee your complete recovery here. He believes that it will be neater both for you, and for him. We are fully capable of providing all the treatment you need on site,” she said smoothly.

“I have a question: how close to each other will we be, precisely?” Eames’ looked pointedly at Arthur.

Dr. Kohler looked confused for a moment. “The rooms are all next to one another on a single floor,” she replied. “They’re quite spacious, but you won’t be too far from each other. You still require monitoring and treatment, so we need to keep you all close to medical staff and facilities.”

“Are they soundproof?”

“I fail to see how that’s relevant,” Dr. Kohler remained laudably calm. “They’ll be quieter, you won't be disturbed by staff attending to others and it will allow us to begin physio and psychotherapy—”

“Psychotherapy?” Arthur said sharply.

Dr. Kohler regarded him with her level gaze. “Think of it less as formal therapy, more as debriefing and checking in, Mr. Moss. You have all had an intense and potentially traumatic experience, both physically and mentally. It would be remiss of me to let you leave without making sure you were psychologically fit as well as physiologically recovered.” She looked around at them all again, her eyes briefly lingering on Cobb’s bed. “I am also a scientist, Mr. Moss, and like it or not, your experiences can help inform research into uses for lucid states. You’re free not to cooperate, of course,” she added smoothly, “but I think you will find that it is a mutually beneficial process. Are there any further questions?”

Eames shrugged, and Arthur shook his head.

“Ariadne?” Dr. Kohler’s eyes met hers.

“How much longer will we be here?” she blurted out. Since they’d woken no one had discussed recovery time, or indicated that they were progressing faster or slower than they should be. A week or so away from her regular life could be passed off as an impromptu vacation or being snowed under with studies, but sooner or later questions would be asked, her family would wonder where she was, her teachers, her friends—

“You’re doing well. Another three to four weeks at most.” Dr. Kohler must have seen her blanch. “Perhaps we need to talk about the, ah, personal arrangements that have been made for you all individually. But you should know that Mr. Saito is covering all the costs of your treatment here, and you will all be substantially remunerated for your work as well.”

“More than we agreed?” Eames perked up.

“I am led to believe it will be proportionate to your efforts. Now, I will send for our orderlies to help move you to your new rooms.” She left with a nod to them all.

“Thank goodness for that,” Eames said to himself. “Although I can’t say the thought of therapy fills me with glee.” He sent another pointed look at Arthur, who was calmly arranging the books at his bedside.

Ariadne ran her thumb over the top of her totem as she watched him. So self contained, so hard to read; she had no idea if he relished the thought of having his privacy, or if he would miss being so close to them all, like part of her did. The abyss she’d felt herself teetering on of all the memories of her personal Limbo would be harder to ignore if she was alone; the dream fragments less easily dismissed as part of putting on a calm face for the others. Perhaps Dr. Kohler was right, and the simple act of telling herself what had been real and what had not wouldn’t be enough.

~*~


	11. Chapter 11

~*~

The private room they put her in was spacious, painted in a soothing shade of cream, with large windows looking out over a lush garden beyond. The sky beyond was rain marbled and the trees waved in the wind, letting her watch them sway back and forth until she was half hypnotised by them. Her bed was larger and more comfortable, the sheets thicker and softer against her skin; but it was still unmistakably a hospital bed, with side rails and a mattress that could be repositioned via a control pad, and she still had a set of monitors at her bed side. Other than that, she might have been in a hotel room, with a deeply carpeted floor; a wardrobe and dresser; thick, creamy coloured drapes; easy chairs by the window and a coffee table that held a small arrangement of roses and lillies. She itched to climb out of bed and explore it, open the doors and drawers, poke inside the bathroom and smell the flowers. She’d had very few occasions to stay in this kind of room, and her innate curiosity was clamouring for the chance to indulge itself. Had she been able to get out of bed she would have taken complete advantage, and normally she would have shut down the impatience and frustration in her head, but instead she clung on to it.

Dr. Kohler’s first session with her began after a few hours of her moving. She knocked and entered as Ariadne was just letting her impatient self take over for the umpteenth time that day. A thorn of dread stabbed her as she watched her cross the room. _Therapy_ , a part of her whispered with gleeful malice: _Watch her unpack all your secrets, clever girl!_ She silently ordered it to shut the fuck up.

“Good morning again,” Dr. Kohler smiled, pulling up one of the easy chairs to Ariadne’s bedside. “Are you comfortable?”

“Yes, thank you,” Ariadne nodded. A lie; she’d gone tense against her pillows and wanted to send Dr. Kohler away so much she could taste the feeling in her mouth.

“Now, Ariadne,” Dr. Kohler took out a legal pad and a pen, resting them on her lap. “As part of your rehabilitation I’d like to discuss your experiences in the shared dreaming environment. You were connected to the PASIV for approximately twelve and a half hours, which is a significant amount of time to be an induced dream. Our analysis of the somnacin leads us to believe that you were operating at a much higher level of brain function than we would usually expect from its use. This being the case, we are currently hypothesising that you would have experienced a very potent and long term dream scenario. Given how realistic these can become, our concern now is to ensure that you are fully oriented in this as reality. And to allow you to discuss any emotional consequences that this may have. Are you happy to do that?”

Ariadne nodded, squeezing her totem in her fist until it hurt. Dr. Kohler made a short note.

“Now, perhaps you could tell me: How long did the dream seem to last for you?” Her blue grey eyes examined Ariadne’s face, almost making her want to flinch.

“Approximately twenty-five years,” Ariadne forced herself to reply.

“How did you measure the passage of that time?” Dr. Kohler asked gently.

“I—” Ariadne swallowed and closed her eyes, taking a slow breath in. In her head she was sidling up to the wall that barred her from those memories, and the fear that if she moved so much as a brick from it it would collapse was clutching around her. No, she snapped at herself, it wasn’t real. You can do this.

“Ariadne?” Dr. Kohler said quietly. “Do you want to stop?”

“I had an architecture practice, and I used the time that it took to build that up. Then I was married and I had two children. Those things were how I measured time.” She forced her voice to stay level.

“How old did you perceive yourself to be when the dream ended?”

“Forty-eight,” Ariadne replied.

“And how old do you perceive yourself to be now?”

“I’m,” she hesitated. Chronologically she was nearly twenty four, but that wasn’t the question she’d been asked. What age did she feel she was: stupid answers popped into her head. A hundred, she felt like saying. A million, maybe, if her ability to think clearly and be physically independent was counted. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. Dr. Kohler said nothing to that, merely made a note.

“Were you aware that you were dreaming, or did you not realise until you woke?”

“I didn’t realise until near the end of my time in the dream. It all seemed...” She shook her head. “It was mostly plausible to me. I don’t know if that was because I made myself ignore the inconsistencies, or that there weren’t any to see. I was always busy, occupied with the life I was leading. I never was allowed to dwell on things. Something would always happen, and I would forget about things from before LA.”

“The scenario started in Los Angeles?”

“Yeah; we woke up on the plane, everything seemed to have worked; we got through the airport; it was just the way it was supposed to be.”

“How did you eventually realise you were dreaming?”

“I disturbed my totem by accident, and it didn’t behave as it should. That was when I knew for certain.”

“Why do you say that? Where you not certain before?”

“I don’t know. I—” She felt her face screw up. “I could always tell before, when I was dreaming and when I was awake. Down there it was like something muffled that out, so I couldn’t feel it any more. It was vague, like a stupid idea that you have at 3am when you can’t sleep: 'What if this is a dream?' 'What if I’m a butterfly dreaming I’m me?' 'What if I’m dead and this is heaven?' Stupid shit like that.”

“But it turned out not to be,” Dr. Kohler added. “How do you feel about that?”

Ariadne started. “I feel—” God, how did she feel? Angry, certainly; but with who? Cobb, for doing as he did? Or herself, for being so blind when she’d always prided herself on being clear headed? “I feel stupid. And I’m angry. With myself and with Dom Cobb. Things happened in the dream that felt like things I wanted. Then when we realised he’d manipulated us...” Her voice caught, and the fear she’d been holding back swamped her. “Did any of us do anything because we wanted to, or because he made us want to? How much was me, and how much was him? Did he give me a whole life that now I have to live with remembering, and can’t get away from, just because he could? I hate him for making me feel this even now, because he’s still causing these things. This is his fault, as much as it’s mine.”

Dr. Kohler stood up, and came to her bedside. In her hand was a square of tissue, which she held out without a comment. It wasn’t until then that Ariadne felt the wet streaks on her cheeks. She was crying, and for some reason that made her hate Cobb even more.

“Very experienced and very gifted dream workers can and do use their abilities to create dreams that can and do force individuals to follow the narrative they set down. The essence of extraction, or inception, is to influence an unconscious subject to reveal their inmost thoughts by doing just that. From what I understand about Mr. Cobb, he was very skilled in using induced dreaming. You would have had to be as practised, if not more, to overcome his ability and you would have to have been conscious of what he was doing. It’s natural to feel like you do, realising what has happened to you. I would be more concerned if you weren’t.” Dr. Kohler half smiled. “But even an experienced dreamer cannot subvert a person’s own internal compass, if you like. What you desired, what you achieved, what you created; your morals and your boundaries, they were all your own subconscious at work. They belonged to you, Ariadne. Just like they do here.”

“Are you saying I should just accept what happened to us?” she sniffled, and cursed herself for it.

“Quite the contrary. I’m saying that you are right to feel angry, if that’s what you want to be. But I’m also saying that you can accept the things you did as your own choices and actions. Your psyche is a wonderful thing. All it wants is for you to survive, and it will make sure of that by whatever means necessary. It helped you live in an unnatural environment and come out intact. That was you, Ariadne, not anyone else.”

“What do I do now?” she asked quietly. “I don’t know what to make of the things that happened. Of the whole life I lived. What can I be, after that?”

“That’s up to you.” Dr. Kohler sat down again, smoothing her skirt and taking up her pad and pen. “Perhaps we can work it out together.”

~*~

The clinic physical therapist visited that afternoon. He was a slight, dark blond man in his early thirties with an endearingly crooked smile and a sharp, aquiline nose.

“I’m Joseph,” he said, shaking Ariadne’s hand. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m confined to a bed,” Ariadne sighed. “I’m weak and everything tires me out.”

“That sounds reasonable, given what you’ve been through. Any aches or pains anywhere?”

As their conversation progressed it soon became clear that this wasn’t going to be the type of therapy where she would get to squeeze a foam ball for a few minutes, then get a massage. After a long assessment where she was helped to raise, bend and rotate her arms and legs, asked to move her head, feet and hands there came a period of what he referred to as assisted stretching, and Ariadne referred to as being pulled apart by each joint in turn.

Before he left he gave her the ubiquitous squeezy ball and attached a pair of resistance tubes to the frame of her bed. “You can do arm and hand exercises while you watch TV, but you will need Sandrine’s help to do your leg raises and hip mobilisations.” He smiled at her again as she lay back on her bed, exhausted and hot. “One set of everything in the morning, the one in the afternoon with me. OK?”

Ariadne managed a feeble nod.

“You’ll be standing again in no time.” He patted her arm. “Ready to face the world.”

As she watched him leave with a jaunty spring in his step, Ariadne hoped to god he was right.

~*~

“Yesterday we talked about the dream you created in Limbo. Perhaps we should discuss it a little more?” Dr. Kohler sat in the easy chair, a cup of coffee in one hand and her pen in the other. The coffee smelled incredible, and Ariadne found her mouth watering. So far caffeine had been forbidden to them for its diuretic effect, and having been through the awkward manipulations required to use a bedpan Ariadne was almost prepared to agree. Although, a large latte with an extra shot seemed incredibly tempting as the rich, roasted smell meandered towards her nose.

“OK,” Ariadne smoothed her bed sheets with her hands.

“Did you live somewhere familiar, or did you create a new environment?” Dr. Kohler asked.

“I lived in Paris. What I thought was Paris. What I remembered of Paris.” Ariadne felt her lips twitch in irritation. “I’m not even sure what verbs are right. It was Paris, but it was my version.”

“So certain places, or features were more prominent?”

“I think. It was like Amelie, all the edges smoothed off. It was always pretty, all the things I love were there. The light, the narrow streets, the landmarks, the college.”

“So there was nothing unpleasant about it? No graffiti, no litter, no poverty, no crime?”

“I would hear about things, but I never really saw it. It would be in the news, or people, my projections would talk about it. But I can’t recall seeing it myself.”

Dr. Kohler wrote a few words down. “So, how did things progress? You woke up in Los Angeles, then I presume you travelled to Paris? What did you do there?”

“Yes. Things were over, and we all separated. I thought Cobb had gone home, that Eames and Yusuf went back to work, Robert and Mr. Saito to their businesses. It was the way things had been planned, or at least that was what I thought. I wanted to finish my degree, because I’d worked so hard on it and I always thought that becoming an architect, making things in real substance was what I wanted to do with my life.”

“You used the past tense there. Did something change? Did the experience of shared dreaming alter your goals?”

Ariadne sat still, looking at her hands. They were marked with the fine white scars of exacto knife cuts, the pale blotches of hot glue burns that had always seemed badges earned through hard work and effort. “It was an incredible experience. Unreal in a lot of ways, not just because it was dreamed but mixing with people I’d never had a chance to before, seeing a whole other life that exists beneath the surface of what’s usual and normal. I loved it. It was a thrill, a rush, being able to do the things I did, not having to wait for years for something to exist but being able to pull it out of the ground just like that,” she said as she snapped her fingers. “But I got caught up in my studies, and I had no idea how to reach the others, so I just— It faded. In my head, whenever I thought I saw one of them, or Robert or Mr. Saito on the news, it would be there in my memories, and then something would distract me, and I’d forget again.”

“You finished your degree, is that correct?”

“Yes. Then I took an internship, and then I started my own partnership.”

“Is that the normal career progression for an architect?”

“Yes, but I— I kind of— It happened very fast. I worked for someone else for a really short amount of time. Normally you’d expect to be building parking garages, gas stations, offices and malls maybe, in a big practice for a decade or so. Then you might move on and do more bespoke work, and then if you got really, really lucky you might get to design and build something that was purely your own. I guess that’s why so many architects build their own houses; we get frustrated and being stifled by cookie cutter work.”

“But that didn’t happen to you?” Dr. Kohler tilted head to one side.

“No. It was tough, but not any more than I had maybe expected.”

“You had an idea of how it might be?”

“It was like, my ultimate fantasy job. I built things all over the world. Houses, skyscrapers, libraries, art galleries— I even built a monastery. I won awards, can you believe that?” She smiled wryly. “How big is my ego?”

“You’re a high achiever.” Dr. Kohler replied levelly. “You work hard and expect the rewards. If one of those rewards is recognition or extrinsic tokens, then I would fully expect them to have been manifest. Do you feel that it was egocentric, to create a perfect working life?”

“Part of me feels now that perhaps I should have been a little more modest. Hearing out loud the things I created for myself— It sounds really vain.”

“Pride in a job well done is a different thing to vanity. As a women, quite often we’re encouraged to be more modest about our achievements, no matter how hard won they are. Perhaps you were merely expressing that desire to be seen and taken at your worth without having to create a facade of self deprecation. Does that sound true to you?”

Ariadne nodded. “It’s shit, you know? If I answered back in a critique, I would be told to take it and learn. But if I guy did it, it was character, strength. So yeah, why not have a few rewards? Why not be proud? I’m damn good. I deserve something for that.”

“The thing now is, how do you feel about entering a world that doesn’t operate by your rules any longer? The recognition may not come so easily. The rewards might be less fulsome. This is a world where you haven’t completed your degree, and if you want to you will have to return to school, and all the frustrations that might entail.”

Ariadne sat back. Dr. Kohler watched her and said nothing.

“In my head, I feel like I know everything. But that isn’t true. I might have imagined building, running a firm, being lauded and praised, but that isn’t what happened. I know that. I have to back to zero, and some part of me feels exhausted by that thought. I’m sitting here thinking, ‘Oh shit, again?’ Twice in one lifetime? It feels so fucking unfair somehow, to have to do over.”

“And the other parts of you?”

“They’re thrilled by the idea. After all, how many of us get a do over that spans a whole adulthood?”

~*~

Ariadne was picking at her lunch of carrot and barley soup and saltines, wondering if she would ever be allowed anything with a little flavour ever again, when Sandrine knocked on the door.

“You have a visitor,” she said brightly.

Ariadne looked up, and felt her smile widen before she could stop it. “Professor Miles?” She asked, half surprised and half shocked he would come all this way for one of his students.

“Ariadne,” he said mildly, coming in to the room as Sandrine stepped aside. He was holding a small bunch of flowers and a black, square box. “I brought you some flowers and some chocolates, if that’s allowed?” He gave Sandrine a twinkling smile, and Ariadne swore she blushed.

“Of course,” she beamed before Ariadne could reply. “Let me put those in some water for you. Would you like some coffee?”

“That would be lovely,” Miles replied graciously with a bow of his head. Sandrine ducked her head, divested Miles of the flowers and slipped out of the doorway with another rosy smile.

“Thank you,” Ariadne said. “Please, sit down.”

Miles pulled one of the easy chairs up to her bedside and sat with a grateful sigh.

“I will say this for private healthcare,” he smiled, “the seats are a lot more comfortable. Anyway, how are you, Ariadne? You look well.” He examined her face.

“I’m better, thank you.” She frowned. “Did you come here just to visit me?”

“Much though I like to keep tabs on my best students, particularly ones who are given to acts that border on being rash, no, not entirely.” He folded his hands in his lap and sighed. “I came to see Dom.”

“Cobb?” She frowned. “But, why would you...?” She had thought they were simply connected as student and teacher, an old mentor taking care of a pupil. There had been hints that Miles knew what Cobb was working at, but even then she couldn’t imagine that kind of concern bringing him all the way to California on a whim.

“Yes. Dom probably neglected to mention various facts of his life to you. Unsurprising, given the line of work he was in, but perhaps you deserve to know. Dominick was married to my daughter, and is the father of my grandchildren.”

The facts slotted into Ariadne’s brain and lit up like a completing circuit. “Mal... Mal was your daughter?”

“Yes,” Miles said heavily. “You really have to understand, the person you might have seen in his head was not the person my daughter was. She was—” Miles broke off and glanced at his shoes. “Mallorie was a gifted, intelligent and headstrong woman. She was loving, and cared deeply for her family, but she was also fond of pursuing her ideas to the very limit, to the point where she would become blind to everything else. She was a gifted dream worker, just like Dom is, but she was driven, had to experience things to their fullest extent. ”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Ariadne mouthed her condolences, feeling they were stupidly inadequate.

“Perhaps that is why I am here to see you, after all.” Miles looked over at her. “I feel some guilt in this affair. I introduced Dominick and Mallorie to shared dreaming, set them down the road as it were. Then I introduced you to Dominick, and despite my requests he took you into the field and now, well: Here you sit, dear girl.” His lips pinched together.

Ariadne took a slow breath to control herself. “Thank you, for your concern. But that decision was mine. I insisted he take me with him so he wouldn’t trap the others,” she said firmly.

“And so you did. But he still managed to hold you in Limbo for a good length of time, didn’t he?” Miles scrubbed at his forehead, and suddenly he looked worn out. “It is always a risk,” he said slowly. “To come back from a place where you made the rules to discover you’re in a world that makes them for you. To believe that it isn’t your life, and call it the dream. To be powerless when you’ve been omnipotent, it’s a hard thing to take.”

“Is that what you think happened to them?”

“I know it was what happened to Mallorie,” Miles replied sadly. “She never told me, and Dom never said, but I was a dream worker before I was a teacher, and I could see her falling apart in front of me. And there was nothing I could do. Once you decide where the line between reality and dreams is, everything becomes evidence in proving yourself correct. You see what you want, and very little can change it. Perhaps that was why I came here, to see you for myself. To see if you had decided where you were.”

“This is real,” Ariadne said pointedly. “I’m awake, and this is my life.”

Miles regarded her furious face and gave her a half smile in return; “Thank you.”

“For _what_?”

“Proving me right. I told Cobb you were better than he was, and I meant it in more ways than just his ability to design and create. You’re more certain of yourself, and that’s probably what’s kept you from succumbling like he has.”

“You think he’s still down there?” Ariadne skated over the compliments.

“I have no idea, Ariadne. He’s comatose, and shows no signs of waking. Who am I to say what he might have chosen?” Miles said bitterly.

“He was afraid,” Ariadne blurted out before she could stop herself. “Of what he might be if he came back. If he was brain damaged or caught for what we did to Fischer.”

Miles shook his head. “He never quite recovered himself after Mallorie died. He ran from things then. It would seem he’s still running now, for all the good it will do him. Maybe it’s better this way. He would never have given it up entirely. He would have kept working, kept taking risks. The children haven’t seen him in so long.” He broke off with another sigh. “Better for him to go like this than shot dead in a back alley somewhere, or coming to an end like Mal’s.”

“You think he’ll never wake up? He wanted to come home,” Ariadne held her own anger with Cobb back. Dr. Kohler might understand her fury, but she had no desire to smear him in front of his father in law and her teacher.

“No, Ariadne, I don’t.” Miles said heavily. “I came to say goodbye to him today. And to make you an offer.” He looked at her with a steady gaze.

“Come back to Paris. To the college. You can return to your degree and complete it once you’re well, with no loss of credit for your time away. Mr. Saito has covered the costs of your tuition and living for the remainder of your course, in addition to the fee he agreed to pay you. He has also agreed to find you the internship of your choice when you’ve graduated.”

“Are you offering me that to make you feel less guilty about Dom and Mal?” Ariadne felt herself bridle. “Or because you don’t want me to end up like them?”

“No, Ariadne. I’m offering you the chance to fulfil all your potential. You have it in you to be truly great, to make a mark on the world, not just to live a hole and corner life where nothing lasts longer than a few minutes on a PASIV. I don’t want you to have to make the same choices as Mallorie and Dom, or the same mistakes. I want you to keep being the one who got away.” Miles replied.

Ariadne stared at him, looking at him sitting in the easy chair, age worn and full of cares, so unlike the charming, engaging teacher she was used to seeing, a man with a ready smile and a quick line always at his fingertips. It was concern that had brought him here, she told herself. _Don’t hear it as patronising, no matter how much you feel it is. And it is, to suggest you need protection, extra help and a hand up, after all you’ve experienced. Be gracious, Ariadne_.

“Thank you,” she said finally.

“Is that thank you, yes?” Miles asked slowly.

“It’s thank you.” Ariadne said firmly. “I’ll think it over.”

~*~ 


	12. Chapter 12

~*~

Ariadne knew she was dreaming from the moment her eyes flickered open and she found herself sprawled over a soft, flat bed. Her body felt light and warm, and when she moved, there were no aches in her joints, no dull fatigue that made her limbs heavy and stupid. She rolled onto her side, closing her eyes and stretching luxuriously, pushing her head back, pointing her toes and fingers to let the warmth and ease trickle through her. The feeling of relief was almost sexual, and her skin tingled with it. She greedily reveled in the feel of the sheets against her skin.

“ _Mmm_ ,” a husky male voice close to her ear murmured. It made her start, her eyes snapping open. She rolled over and into a solid form that was suddenly lying behind her. She felt a hard lump of fear in her chest, thinking wildly that she had dreamt up Lance again.

But no, lying behind her was Arthur, smiling his best intimate and almost filthy smile, dimples and all. He looked dishevelled, his hair mussed and rumpled. Her brain dimly registered that he was naked, and his skin was warm to the touch.

“You look delicious,” he murmured, one hand splayed over over her face and neck, fingers stroking her skin. Before she could say a word, his mouth covered hers, his body arching and wrapping around her in an impossible twist of physical movement. His hands felt as if they were touching every arousing part of her body; teasing her nipples, massaging her ass, lingering up and down her thighs, igniting the nerves under her skin into a blazing frenzy that made her feel molten as she grabbed at him, dragging him closer.

“Oh god,” she mumbled stupidly as he kissed a path down her neck, sucking at the point beneath her ear that always made her shiver. Her hands scratched at his back, pressing into the skin and muscle with aggressive joy. Her hips pushed up into his, and she felt his erection rub against her labia, the gentle scratch of hair on her almost making her come.

Arthur’s tongue dawdled along her breastbone, his hands cupping and massaging her breasts, teasing her nipples into hard, puckered buds before he swooped down and sucked one into his mouth. He hummed with a feline sound of delight, and it arrowed through her in a wave of pleasure, making her arch and cry out his name. She felt him smile against her, and he hummed again. This time the shock was harder, wetness seeping onto her thighs as she groaned. She was so aroused it seemed impossible. Nothing ever made her feel that way; huge, greedy surges of desire made her vibrate and shake with even the smallest touch.

“Arthur,” she moaned, stroking him with urgent hands that she forced between them, scratching his nipples with her fingernails until he reared up, throwing his head back and groaning, catching his lower lip between his teeth.

“More, Ariadne,” he gasped, “more, please.” She rose up to take one flat nipple between her lips, flicking her tongue around it as it hardened. Her hands snakde down to grasp his cock, and she felt the precome on her fingertips. He was as hard as a rock, pulsing in her palm as she worked him with a soft twisting, up and down motion. Her body roared at the need he was showing; she wanted him and he wanted her. She wanted to fuck him until he was weak and exhausted, and then fuck him all over again, her body writhing and riding his until she couldn’t move anymore.

His fingers brushed her clit right at that moment. “Uhmm,” he groaned, “you’re so wet.” It was hard for him to speak as her thumb ran around the head of his cock. Then his fingertips pressed down, making tiny circles over and around her, his other hand tracing up and down her lips, bringing the moisture up and over her. The feeling was so intense that she cried out again, her body tensing and shaking as he kept going.

“That’s it, Ariadne,” he said. “Show me how you come.”

Her body was hot, the urgent tension inside making her press against him over and over until it burst out of her, spasming with release. She felt nothing but white burning pleasure for a moment so long it couldn’t have been anything but unreal, but she genuinely didn’t care. It was like a full body scream, long and breathless as it let go.

She came back to herself eventually, and Arthur was still in front of her, licking his fingers and smirking with obvious pride.

“My turn,” she purred at him, and with a move she could never achieve in reality, she threw him onto his back and straddled him in one smooth motion. “This is for me, yeah?” She grinned at him as she fisted his cock again, watching with delight as he opened his mouth and made a strangled groaning sound.

“Then I’m having it,” she growled, taking it as assent. She lifted her hips and guided him into her. Her body opened, the firm slide of him inside her feeling exquisite. “Oh my god, that’s good,” she panted. She brought her hips down to meet his, tensing around him and relishing the hiss that he made.

“Fuck me,” he said in a desperate voice. “Fuck me, Ariadne. _Fuck me_.” His hands bit into her ass, dragging her closer as she began to pulse her hips back and forth.

“So good,” she groaned, fastening her hands on his shoulders to go even harder. He was filling her, and it was better than it ever felt for her before. Her clit was pulsing, tingling with stimulation that she normally needed her hands to give her, the pressure inside her building again. Arthur was loud, urging her on as she drove into him, and that made her burn even more.

“Come on, Ariadne, come on,” he moaned. “Fuck me like this. I love it, I want my cock in your pussy like this all the fucking time. God, you’re so fucking hot when you fuck me.” He broke off into a loud _ahh_ that vibrated under her. She was undoing him, and it was incredible. She wanted more of this sensation, making her burn with the sheer power. His body was hers, his pleasure and his want hers to control.

Arthur began panting under her, his motions getting jerky and erratic as he twitched inside her. She knew he was close, and tried to push harder on the downstrokes. “That’s it, Arthur,” she said in a tight, desperate voice. “You wanna come for me, don’t you? You wanna come inside me, and make me come too, huh?”

Arthur gasped, words evidently too much. “Oh, god Arthur.” She leaned over, catching his face between her hands. “You look at me. Look at me and see who’s making you come.” His eyelids fluttered, and he opened his eyes, pupils gone so huge they seemed to be eclipsing his irises. His lips were parted, his brow furrowed. Then his whole body jerked upwards into hers, hands dragging her down into him as he tried to say her name.

That tipped her over the edge. Her body pulled tight, crashing down to his, and she shook, waves of physical sensation washing through her as she writhed over him. It was like a starburst inside her body, light exploding and radiating until she let go and fell onto him.

~*~

She jerked awake so suddenly the room felt like it was tip tilting around her. The dark was disorientating and there was a warmth between her thighs, a sharp afterimage of the dream making her pulse and twist towards it.

The light came on in a blinding flash, and the next things she knew Sandrine was leaning over her, taking in her heated face, her body lying in the disordered sheets that Ariadne suddenly felt around her in an embarrassing knot, her breathing going too fast for sleep.

“Ariadne, are you alright? You were calling out in your sleep.” Sandrine’s forehead furrowed in concern.

For one mortifying moment it occurred to her that she might have been yelling Arthur’s name out for everyone to hear, or that somehow everything about her was screaming ‘I had a sex dream!’

“Yes, I’m fine,” she croaked in a thick voice. “I was dreaming.” Sandrine’s face relaxed, and she started to straighten the bed around Ariadne’s sprawled body.

“That’s good. Natural dreaming is a sign you’ve recovered well,” she smiled encouragingly. Ariadne wasn’t so sure if having a vivid dream like that the one she’s just had is an indicator of anything, except maybe her own desire to screw Arthur. Her emotional equilibrium felt jangled and off, as if her subconscious was trying to force the issue of him back into the forefront of her mind, and she had no idea what to do about it.

“Would you like some water?” Sandrine asked as she sat Ariadne up and plumped her pillows.

“No, thank you.” Ariadne settled back, watching Sandrine pour a glass and set it on her bedside table.

“In case you change your mind later,” she said solicitously.

Ariadne closed her eyes and the room went dark again, Sandrine’s footsteps going down the hall sounding in a steady beat. She focused on the sound, that and nothing else, and made herself shut off.

~*~

“Sandrine tells me that you had a dream last night,” Dr. Kohler remarked over her coffee cup. “That you were talking in your sleep and she found you a little disturbed.”

Ariadne fidgeted in the easy chair. Being allowed out of bed had been a relief, but now she found herself missing having her sheets to fiddle with as a distraction.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

Ariadne tilted her chin up and forced herself to be mature. “It wasn’t a nightmare. It was,” she drew in a steadying breath. “It was sexual.”

“That’s perfectly normal,” Dr. Kohler said calmly. “We all have sexual dreams from time to time. Did you simply feel aroused, or was it a more detailed scenario?”

“I was with someone,” Ariadne replied shortly. “We were having sex in my dream.”

“And you were quite aware it was a dream?”

“Yes,” Ariadne clenched her fingers into her palms.

“You mentioned before that in your portion of Limbo, your dream scenario, that you were married and had children. I assume that you were physically intimate with your husband in that scenario?”

“Yes,” Ariadne managed. In a blur she recalled Lance’s body against hers, and with a jarring shock the memory reshaped, and she was back with Arthur, writhing over him in animal abandon.

“So, did this feel similar?”

“No,” Ariadne hesitated. “It was different. More intense. Less...” She felt her lips twist. “Less gentle. More physical.”

“Your relationship with your projection, your husband,” Dr. Kohler clarified. “Would you characterise it as gentle?”

Ariadne looked up at her. What was her relationship with Lance like? He had been solicitous, attentive of her needs, now she looked back at it he had been something that no real person ever was; flawless, a mix of Arthur’s containment and her own desire for closeness. She had never needed to say things, because he always seemed to know what she needed. Even sexually. There had been so little of the fumbling awkwardness of learning another’s body and desires; it had gone seamlessly from friendship to relationship to marriage without a hitch.

“I would characterise it as...” Ariadne fumbled for the word. “It was perfect. But perfect in the way all things that are complete are. They go nowhere. They can’t change, because they’re done. It was almost as if he needed nothing but me, he existed for me and he made me whole. But that wasn’t real, and that’s not how things are. I felt content, like a cat, or a baby; stupid, mindless, contentment.”

“Is it wrong to want to be content with someone?" Dr. Kohler asked.

“No, but I think it comes in flashes, in moments. To want to be content all the time is unreasonable.”

“You seem to feel dissatisfied with the relationship you had. Do you think it’s a reflection on how you regard being intimate or close to someone? That it can’t ever be what you might like it to be? That you might get so lost in being content you stop seeing clearly?”

“I—” Ariadne faltered again. “I want to be close to someone. I don’t want to be alone,” she said to her lap. “We all need that, right? To survive and be healthy.”

“No, it isn’t an uncommon desire. We can sit here and discuss Maslow’s hierarchy of needs if you like, but intellectualising your need for closeness won’t help if its coloured by the anxieties that come with it.”

Ariadne stared at her lap. Her brain kept pinging back to Arthur, the need to be close to something real inside the dream but at the same time the desire, the attraction to him pulling out of her and trying to tangle him up.

“I don’t want to end up like I was with Lance, all muffled up inside a cocoon of lazy complacency.” She scrubbed at her face with one hand. “I see it now, that what I was doing was trying to give myself something I thought I couldn’t have, full-on wish fulfilment. Is that always going to be how I see my relationships now, that if they’re not perfect or I feel unworthy of them I’ll throw them away or never let them happen?”

Dr. Kohler regarded her for a moment. “Lance was an projection,”

“Please don’t say that. It makes it feel like I was up to some kind of creepy masturbation.” Ariadne covered her closed eyes.

“In essence, you embodied—?” Ariadne nodded at the word. “You embodied an idea of a relationship. Real people in relationships are rarely so perfected, so passive as you mentioned. What makes us love someone is not their ability to see us as perfect, but instead to see us as imperfect and want us regardless. Real people have wants, desires and flaws. Those are things we cannot take away, not from them, or ourselves. In a relationship with someone real, you are going to be aware of that, and you are going to have to be aware that they can and will express them, and let them do so. Your proj— Your embodiment was motivated by you, he came from you and your unconscious. He never needed to ask, or say. You have to allow a real person to be motivated by themselves, to let yourself trust them, and take them at their word.”

Ariadne inhaled shakily. “He looked like someone I was—” The word stuck in her mouth. “I _am_ attracted to. He was even a little like him. Superficially.”

Dr. Kohler nodded.

“I think that’s what I did, you know. I made him out of that desire, that he was a version of Ar— that someone I could keep, and know.”

“Do you think that this person is not someone who you can be in a relationship with?”

“I don’t know. I thought I did, but things are so different now, everything we went through.”

“This will sound pat, but have you tried talking with this someone about this?”

“There hasn’t been a good time,” Ariadne shook her head.

“I find that if we wait for the time to be good, or right, we very rarely do anything. Perhaps you should take a moment today, and be as straightforward about it as you are about everything else, and see what the other person has to say about this. You might just surprise yourself.”

“And if I don’t?” Ariadne shot back.

“Then you’ll know, and you can go on from there. If this is a do over, why not start it by seeing what real life can offer you that your dreams couldn’t?”

~*~

Ariadne had just finished her physical therapy session when Arthur knocked on her partly open door. Joseph had asked her to walk a few circuits of her room, first with his support then by herself. It had been a curious mix of elation at starting to move alone again, and frustration that something she had been doing unconsciously and without even thinking since she was less than a year old was suddenly full of effort and exhausting. However, the reward for her efforts had been that she finally convinced Sandrine to bring her a fresh cup of coffee. When Arthur appeared, she was sitting in one of the easy chairs, gazing at the scene in front of her window and savouring every richly roasted small sip.

“Can I come in?” he asked politely when she caught sight of him in her doorway. Her brain faltered for a second, the sex dream and Dr. Kohler’s words coming back in a skin chilling prickle. Had she sent him here to talk to her?

“Sure, please.” She tried not to sound anxious, and was aware she was probably failing. Arthur wheeled himself over, and Ariadne couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy. “You’re allowed a wheelchair?” She raised her eyebrows at him as he half smiled, and she felt the anxiety ebb away from her.

“It’s a perk of the fact I worked out so much before this happened. Good baseline muscle mass, Joseph says. The payoff of push ups,” He positioned himself facing her and put the brakes on. “That doesn’t explain why Eames is already up on crutches though. His idea of exercise is usually lifting a glass and running from his creditors,” he added with a dry twist of his lips, and hauled himself up, out of the wheelchair, and took a few measured steps to the other easy chair. “Luckily he decided getting Yusuf up and around was more fun than annoying the hell out of me and the nurses.” He settled himself down with a sigh.

“That would explain why he hasn’t visited me yet,” she said lightly.

“He only got them this morning. There’s still plenty of time,” Arthur eyed her cup with a covetous light in his eyes. “But you’ve got coffee. How the hell did you get them to give you that?”

“Would you believe it was my feminine wiles?” She smiled coyly over the rim of her cup, and Arthur grinned again.

“Maybe. Or maybe Joseph has a soft spot for you.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Sandrine brought it for me. It was my reward for walking unaided around the room. Although maybe I should have asked for a wheelchair instead.”

“We could have an exchange,” Arthur proposed.

“I think I’m good with my coffee, thank you.” She took another sip. “Would you like some of mine?” She reluctantly held out her cup, and Arthur shook his head.

“I don’t think I should come between you,” he replied half seriously, and Ariadne felt her smile widen.

“So, how are you?” She settled back again. “Aside from lack of coffee?”

“I’m doing well. Physio is fine. Therapy is...” He shrugged. “It’s interesting. And you? I heard Miles came to see you.”

Ariadne caught his eyes watching her with a serious light in them. “Yes,” she said hesitantly. “He came to invite me back to school. Well, I say invite. He pretty much urged me to or end up like Dom and Mal.”

“Do you think you’ll go back?” Arthur asked quietly.

“I don’t know.” Ariadne looked at her coffee as she answered. “I want to do that. But I think I want to do this as well.”

“You mean dream share, right?” Arthur’s frown surprised her. “You’re not scared by all this?” He indicated the room around them.

“How often do things like this happen? They’re rare, right? This is unusual, not the norm.”

“Not often,” Arthur admitted. “But there are other things to bear in mind. It’s not the most stable life there is. It can be downright dangerous. No one gets old in dream share, remember?”

Ariadne felt herself starting to glower at him. “Are you warning me off?”

“No, I warning you not to fall for the rush.” Arthur leaned forwards. “Cobb’s a great example of what happens when you let it go to your head. I see him, and all I think is that if I am not careful it could be me lying there, like that one day. If I’m lucky that thought will stop me ever going that far.”

Ariadne started. The thought of Arthur, calm, pragmatic and subtle, ever becoming like Cobb in any way, shape or form was almost beyond belief.

“And there’s Limbo to consider. It gets more difficult the longer or more often you go there, and going down that far isn’t something people plan on doing. It’s usually accidental. We could pose a real risk to anyone we work with after this.”

“But you’re still going back to it,” she finished for him.

“I hope to,” Arthur said levelly. “I’m not telling you not to, Ariadne. I’m saying you should understand every risk there is.”

“What about the things Eames mentioned before?” She felt the anxiety come back in a rush. “About you and me, being bound up in each other and that being dangerous?”

Arthur seemed to flinch at that. “Two people, who have been into Limbo before, with a close emotional bond, going into Limbo together again. Theoretically it’s folie a deux; each maintaining the illusion between them makes it harder to leave, and harder to get people out of.”

Ariadne swallowed nervously. “So, do we have a close emotional bond?” she asked in a high voice. “Since, if what we did was just to get through it all, I would understand, you know? I would get it. It’s a shared experience, right? Comfort in familiarity.”

Arthur’s mouth had fallen open and his frown was so knotted it almost hurt to look at. “Do you think that’s what it was?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head.

“Yes, you do.” He reached out and caught her hand. “I didn’t do or say anything with you because I wanted to be back with my wife, or just to feel closer to reality, or the familiar. I thought I was married to you for twenty years, Ariadne, and the minute I saw you again I realised that all I had done was made a paper thin imitation of the person I wanted all that time ago and that I still want now. What does that tell you?”

Ariadne felt her throat close as he stared into her face. “You wanted to be with me?” The question was redundant, and she knew it even as she said it, but something made her want to hear it again. Arthur had a way of pushing past the sharp, outer shell she used to maintain herself in public and reach to the less certain, vulnerable person beneath.

“I used the present tense,” he said firmly. “If you want this to end here, and go back to your life and never see me again, I won’t try and convince you. But you deserve the truth from me, because I care about you too much to pretend it was nothing more than convenient comfort.”

She looked at him, his eyes running over her features as if he was committing them to memory in this moment. He held her hand, stark vulnerability in his features that she had never seen before evident in his words, face and touch.

“I don’t want it to end here,” she replied in a ridiculous, tiny voice. “I just never thought that you might be interested in me like that. You never said anything.”

Arthur started to shake his head, a stunned laugh coming out of his mouth. “I couldn't while we were working, there wasn’t time or space for it. I didn’t want to half ass the job or anything between us. I tried my best to keep it to myself, but there were times it was just too easy not to.”

“When you kissed me?” She felt a little light headed at this new information. Sure, she’d noticed him looking at her, smiling at her, taking care of her education in paradoxical architecture and shared dreaming, how his tone of voice with her was always less acerbic, more dry and amused. It all fell into a new configuration in her head and she saw it suddenly for what it was— a guy who liked a woman and wanted to connect with her on a closer level.

“Among others,” he said with a smile. “But I had thought that afterwards I might ask you to have dinner, or go for some coffee. I don’t make a habit of sticking around after jobs, or staying that close to the people I’ve worked with afterwards, but just for once I wanted to break my own rules so I could see you.”

“Then we got stuck in Limbo,” Ariadne said ruefully.

“And I married my idea of you.”

“And I married my idea of you,” she admitted with a shamefaced look at him. “You saw Lance. He was based on you, even if I couldn't quite admit it then. I still have a hard time admitting it now.”

“Why?” Arthur’s fingers rubbed the back of her hand.

“I never imagined you’d want to have any kind of relationship with me. I thought you’d say that you weren’t the kind of man who stuck around, or was committed or that I could take home to meet my folks. Or that if I admitted to anything it would be awkward, like owning up to a crush, and I just couldn’t bear the whole idea of you trying to let me down gently.”

“Say it to me now,” Arthur replied seriously.

“What?”

“Say what you would have said, if you were going to tell me you wanted to be with me. You’re never shy about coming forward with anything else, Ariadne. Say it to me now, like we’re just off the plane and you want to ask me for coffee.”

Ariadne moved her lips silently for a moment. “Arthur...” She met his eyes with the steadiest gaze she could manage. “I like you. I like you and I want to be with you, despite the fact there are probably a million reasons why you’ll say no, or that we shouldn’t. You’re intelligent, you’re funny, you’re strong, you give a shit about people even when they fuck you over like Cobb did, and you make me feel weak in the goddamned knees when you smile at me,”

“Come here,” Arthur said in a low, strange voice, but he didn’t wait for her to move. Her coffee cup hit the floor with a crack as he brought them closer together, cupping her face in both hands and kissing her for the first time outside a dream. Ariadne speared her hands into his hair, letting her fingers cradle his head, and let herself kiss him back. Her entire self felt like it was weightless with happiness, a moment of floating joy as their lips pressed together in an embrace that felt as if it would last for hours.

When they let go, Arthur was looking at her with his dimpled smile. “See, that worked.” She felt her grin blossom in response.

“You—” She tried for a curse and ended up with a snort of laughter. “That wasn’t fair.”

“Don’t pout, it doesn’t become you.” Arthur said mock scoldingly. “Don't ever think that you don’t deserve my time, or my attention, or that I won’t want to listen if you tell the truth, OK?”

“OK,” Ariadne nodded. “I’ll try. So,” she hesitated. “What now?”

“We could make out some more?” Arthur smiled hopefully.

“I meant, if we both go back into dream share.”

“We could partner up, if you’re happy to do that? For some of the time, anyway. I doubt you want to live in my pockets, or have me live in yours.” Arthur said with a good natured roll of his eyes. “When you make your mind up about school, then we can talk about where we go from there, if you like?” Ariadne felt a ripple of happiness down her spine.

“Are we safe to dream together?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I do know that as long as we stay aware of each other, try to keep our personal things out of our work, then we might be OK. Limbo is the risk, not the dreams themselves. We can take care of each other, make sure we don’t get stuck. If all else fails, I’ll come and find you. You know I will,” he promised.

“I’d do the same,” she swore. “Everything else we can work out as we go along, can’t we?”

“Exactly,” Arthur smiled at her. “It really can’t work any other way.” He added, against her lips right before she kissed him again.

~*~

“How are you today?” Dr. Kohler asked as she put two cups of coffee on the low table between them. “You look well,” she said as Ariadne smiled.

“I took your advice,” she replied. “It helped. In the end.”

“And how are things with Mr. Moss?” Ariadne felt herself colour slightly at the question.

“We’re coming to an understanding. I was afraid, that it had just been something between us that we used to help ourselves get out of Limbo, and that it couldn’t survive in reality.”

Dr. Kohler nodded. “And now?”

 

“I saw him, as a person. Someone who had wants and needs, and I’m one of them. Not the idea of me, but me.” The strange bubble of happiness she’d felt yesterday surged up again.

“We always wonder, I think, about relationships forged in experiences that are that intense, if they are simply based on that shared experience. It can be scary to imagine what would hold one together if the shared experience didn’t exist, or if one day it wasn’t enough. To recognise that there is more to a relationship than that, it takes a connection rather than just a joint memory, that’s a great way to begin. Do you have a connection with Mr. Moss, do you think?”

“I think so. We really...” She grinned again. “We really like each other. And we care about each other.”

“Do you still fear the notion of becoming complacent, or lazy?”

“Sure,” Ariadne said, clasping her hands in her lap. “But I won’t know if that’s going to happen unless I try, right? I can learn from what happened before; I don’t have to do it all again.”

“There are no guarantees, of course,” Dr. Kohler said as she tilted her head to one side, “that things will work out or we will have the lives we want. But it’s better to take a chance than regret what might have been. Your dream experiences can be lessons, if you want them to be. I’m glad,” she finished, “that you’re willing to do both.”

~*~


	13. Chapter 13

~*~

Her days changed shape again once she and Arthur began to see each other, or as much as they could in a shared corridor of rooms with medical staff coming and going, and Eames on his crutches racing Yusuf in his wheelchair down the hall at odd intervals.

Her mornings would be taken up with her therapies, self care and sending cheerful emails to her family, talking about how beautiful Paris was now summer was properly here. It pricked her to lie, but she would rather have the pretense than her mother and father trying to conceal their distaste for each other while hanging over her hospital bed and making a fuss. She wasn’t even sure Saito would allow them inside the clinic, she reasoned, typing another line about how she was studying hard and having a blast.

After lunch Arthur would wheel himself down the hall to visit with her, and steal more kisses when they were sure they were unobserved. If they were they would talk; and in talking Ariadne discovered Arthur was quietly passionate about films and books;  loved good coffee even more than she did; had a sister and a brother; was from New York via Ohio; that he had houses in more places than she had ever imagined he might, but that he liked Paris most of all.

“Why?” she had asked innocently.

“Do you really have to ask?” He waggled his eyebrows

“Don’t be cheesy,” she narrowed her eyes at him with a pained shake of her head.

“Even if it’s true?”

“Really?”

“Alright, maybe not just that. Paris is filthy, busy, full of Parisians, full of tourist traps and tourists. But...” He paused for effect. “It is an incredible city. It’s beautiful, and stately, and elegant.” He ran his hand down her arm, tracing to the tips of her fingers. “It was the first city I went to in Europe, before London or Berlin even. It was where I met Mal,” he said gently. “And you. It means a lot to me.”

“You met Mal in Paris?” Ariadne fished, lacing her fingers between his.

“Yeah,” Arthur smiled sadly. “I was sent to her so she could teach me more about dream design and paradoxical architecture. At the time, all I’d experienced were combat simulations, so when she showed me the things she could do; it blew my mind. She was very, very good. A better extractor than Cobb’s ever been, even if he was the better architect. She became my friend. They both did.” His jaw tightened for a second.

“Is that why you stayed with him after she died?” Ariadne kept her voice quiet.

“Yes,” Arthur held onto the sibilant for a second. “I never promised her that I would. I didn’t even know until he showed up looking for work, and he was a wreck. I didn’t know if he could extract or build properly in that state, but he insisted. For a while, he was OK. Then she started showing up, getting to marks before we did, getting projections through the mazes. Things got difficult, more than once. He started pulling riskier things, like Mr. Charles. We were successful, and we had a good reputation for getting things done, but sometimes it was by a hair’s breadth, and he just didn’t give a damn.” He kissed the back of her hand, his lips lingering on her skin.

“Have you seen him since we woke up?” Ariadne turned their hands over and kissed the back of his.

“No,” Arthur replied. “I don’t want to.”

“If I did,” she started slowly, “would you come with me?”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“I feel like we could have done more. That somehow if we’d just convinced him he’d be back here. And I guess I just want to see, for myself, that he’s still alive. That he might still wake up.”

Arthur sighed heavily. “If that’s what you want, I’ll come with you. But Ariadne, we could have talked forever and not made a dent in him.” He leaned his head against hers. “Seeing him now won’t change that.”

“I know, but— I want to hope, that somehow he’ll change his mind. If it’s me like that one day, I’d like to believe that there would be hope for me too.”

Arthur kissed her temple. “It won’t ever be you. You’re not like him. I won’t let you become like him, because I will never not call you on your shit.”

Ariadne bent her head towards his and their lips met. The kiss was tender, and his hands drew lines over her skin, making her body tingle under his touch. She was losing herself in the sensation when suddenly a loud voice started singing in an exaggerated Cockney accent:

_“Oh, we haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,_

_"And be just as happy as the birds on the tree,”_

She and Arthur sprang apart, both of them turning to see Eames, propped on his crutches and making cow eyes at them as he warbled,

“ _The boy I love is up in the gallery...”_

“Thank you, Eames,” she said loudly, trying to make him stop.

 _“The boy I love is looking now at me.”_ He put one hand on his chest as if he was clutching his heart in a maudlin fashion. “Hold on, this is the good bit,” he added in his usual voice.

“Stop it!” she snapped, and Eames closed his mouth, his eyebrows raised in studied offence.

“No need to be so touchy,” he said tartly. “I’m pleased you’ve sorted this out, that’s all.”

“Really?” Arthur drawled. “Or are you just hoping for a scrap of amusement from it?”

“Believe it or not,” Eames replied. “I am. I like knowing there are half way decent people working in the business, and the idea of you both dropping out of it because you’ve got unresolved relationship issues with each other breaks my heart.”

“Who said I was going back into it?” Ariadne shot back. She wasn’t about to even try to refute the relationship issues part.

“Of course you are, Ariadne. Once is never enough, especially not for a smart cookie with gifts like yours.” He gave her a mirthless smile.

“What about you and Yusuf then?”

“Yusuf and I,” he corrected pompously, “have had a chat. We’re pretty confident we can keep things on the level between us. Isn’t it all now fine and dandy, hmm? Anyway, I’ll let you get back to sucking face. I’ll pop back later for tea and gossip.” He saluted them with his free hand, then gathered his crutches back and hobbled off.

“Well, that could have been worse.” Ariadne looked at Arthur, who was grimacing faintly.

“Define worse,” he muttered. “He’s either going to be insufferable, or fine with it, and I never damn well know which. Ugh,” the grimace came out in full force. “He’s an excellent forger, and a damn good thief, but I wish he wasn’t so damn annoying sometimes.”

“It’ll be fine,” she soothed. “Underneath it all, I think he likes you. And you like him.”

Arthur snorted. “Maybe,” he gave up grudgingly. “It’s hard not to have some respect for the annoying son of a bitch, I admit.”

Ariadne smoothed his hair with her fingers. “Now,” she smiled, “how about we finish what we started before he showed up?”

Arthur glanced back at the doorway. “I don’t hear anyone,” he admitted slowly.

“Good,” she breathed into the space between them, and closed the distance with her lips.

~*~

“I’d like to visit Cobb,” Ariadne said to Dr. Kohler. Her eyebrows rose, the surprise on her face written large.

“Why would you like to do that?” she asked slowly.

“I think— No, I know, that I want to believe that we could have changed his mind. Somehow, he might still do it. I just want to see that he’s still alive, that there might still be a hope for him.”

“Mr. Cobb is in a coma,” Dr. Kohler replied in a level voice. “He is currently one point above the Glasgow coma scale score that would qualify him as being in a deep, persistent comatose state.” She paused as if considering her next words. “Or dead. His body is alive, because we’re helping him to breathe, giving him nutrients and removing waste. His brain, on the other hand, shows virtually no activity on any scan or test we have administered. There is still a possibility he could recover, people have returned from much greater insults before. However, I need you to understand that that possibility is small, very small. No matter what we do, or what you feel you could have done, it will remain small. This is a physical condition now, more than it is a psychological one. Do you understand?”

“I do. I just want to believe that he’s still trying. That the things he did to banish his projection of Mal weren’t in vain.”

“From what you’ve told me, I doubt that they were. However, from what I understand, Mr. Cobb was motivated for a long time by two forces: desire, and fear. To do away with one representation of that may not have been enough. You had no way of knowing, and there would have been nothing you could do, unless he laid himself completely open to you, with no barriers or resistance. In all the time I’ve been practicing, I have never had a patient who didn’t resist somehow, in some way, even at an unconscious level. You tried, but sometimes we have to accept that all the good will in the world won’t save a person who doesn’t want to be rescued.”

Ariadne looked at Dr. Kohler, her frown marring her features as she regarded Ariadne steadily.

“I understand,” Ariadne said quietly. “Even if I don’t believe it yet.”

“I’ll arrange for you to go this afternoon.” Dr. Kohler wrote a note on her pad. “Now, you mentioned yesterday that you’d like to talk about your experience of mothering again. Perhaps we could start by discussing Carl and Aisling’s childhood.”

~*~

Sandrine wheeled Ariadne in her wheelchair into the room where they’d all spent their first week, and Arthur followed behind on crutches. Their beds were now tightly made up and spotless, all the curtains had been opened, and the room felt huge and empty, save for the single occupant.

Cobb lay on the bed he’d been in all the time, just as they had been positioned when they woke. On his back, arms at his sides, his face now scruffy with a beard and moustache, making him look unkempt and grubby against the sparkling white linens. A small block of monitors at his bedside beeped and hummed, their wires vanishing under his gown at the shoulder, and a tube softly clouded with condensation had been taped down to his face before it ran into his mouth. An IV dripped slowly in the stand on his other side, and as they got closer Ariadne could see the plastic coupling in his arm, bigger than the old PASIV cannula scars fading on his wrists.

“Five minutes is all we can allow, I’m afraid,” Sandrine said quietly as she stopped Ariadne’s chair at the bedside. As she slipped away, Arthur took the seat next to Ariadne and for a moment they both sat in silence, looking at the body in the bed.

“Did we look like that, do you think?” Ariadne finally said.

“I don’t know,” Arthur replied.

“He looks so small.” Ariadne twisted her lips. “And...feeble.” The sadness of him in this state filtered through her, not shock, just a slow, gradual realisation of his frailty, jarring against the man she’d known who had wielded his authority and skill like a blade. Not a god after all; just skin and bones, mortal and finite like everyone else. She reached out and touched his hand briefly, feeling the coolness of his skin before she drew back.

“Cobb,” she leaned closer to him, hands on the edge of the bed. Hearing is the last sense to go, she remembered. “Cobb, if you’re there: There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. Saito and Fischer are fine. We’re all OK. Your kids...”

“Philipa and James,” Arthur supplied softly.

“Philipa and James are here. Professor Miles is here. We’ll all be here, when you want to come back. I believe you can, if you want to.”

She watched his chest rise and fall. The monitors kept beeping, steadily measuring and maintaining. The IV drops kept falling, one after another, clear and blank as tears.

Cobb didn’t move.

Ariadne stared at his face, half willing his eyelids to flicker as the seconds passed, mounting up into another eternity of silence until Arthur’s hand closed on her arm.

“He’s not going to wake up just like that.” There was a note of disappointment in his tone, she thought sadly. Perhaps he too had hoped, in some small corner of himself, in spite of everything.

“I know,” Ariadne said quietly. “But still.” She let go of the edge of the bed. “Goodbye Cobb,” she finished. “Thank you, for everything. Even the fucking terrible parts. Thank you.”

She wheeled herself away from the bed, feeling a smear of tears under her eyes. When she turned back for an instant, Arthur was standing at Cobb’s bedside, his head bowed slightly. She had no idea what he might be saying, but she hoped for both their sakes that it was farewell.

~*~

After their visit to Cobb, Arthur took to staying with her in her room later into the evenings. When before he had left as her dinner had arrived, now he would eat with her, waiting for her to climb into bed and kissing her goodnight before he left for his own room.

“I was trying to be discreet,” he admitted when she asked about it. “Although it seems redundant now Eames and Dr. Kohler know. Saito is determined to keep us here until he’s ready, but I’m not going to pussyfoot around, pretending we’re not together until he makes his mind up. And you can always kick me out sooner, if you like,” he’d offered, recoiling with a laugh when she slapped his arm playfully.

“Why would I do that? I like having you here,” she replied firmly. “Sandrine doesn’t mind, although she did raise her eyebrows the first time she saw us sitting on the bed, and neither does anyone else. Or if they do, they haven’t said. Besides, who else is going to supervise my journey into film noir if not you, hmm?” She raised her eyebrows at him, but her smile came back far too easily when he took her hand and dropped a kiss on the back of it.

“I can never resist a dame with eyes like a razor and a mind like diamonds,” he drawled in his best Dashiell Hammett gumshoe voice.

“I think that’s back to front,” she laughed.

“In your case, it works either way round,” Arthur had replied, before he swallowed her retort straight from her lips into his mouth.

After a few evenings spent sitting side by side in her easy chairs, they had taken to lying on her bed, her cushioned partly on him, watching old movies. And making out, she would admit. Arthur had a way of idly starting to kiss her temple, or curling her hair in his fingers that would lead to her rolled over on top of him, sneaking her hands under his t shirt and stroking his skin while he roamed his hands over her back, the bottom of her thighs and over her arms that made her shiver and press into their kisses with more heat. Every evening they seemed to get a little bolder in their exploration, but Arthur never pushed his advantage, despite the fact she could feel his erection when her hands grazed over his lap, and she never pushed hers, no matter how aroused he left her.

They were watching The Maltese Falcon, about a week after they had taken to their new routine; Sam Spade had just cornered the renamed Ruth Wonderley and Ariadne was gently rubbing Arthur’s thigh through his sweatpants. Arthur was kissing her neck, his fingers tantalisingly close to the swell of her breasts, but never quite touching them as he stroked her shoulders and upper arms. She could feel her nipples going stiff against the fabric of her shirt, the warm anticipation making her breasts feel heavy and sensitive, and the slickness between her thighs. It always felt wonderful, but she was starting to crave more. The reminders that they were in a hospital and there were other people around was starting to wane.

“Arthur,” she whispered.

“Mmm hmm,” he said without stopping his motions.

“Arthur, I need—” She felt another shiver go through her, and her hand slipped higher almost without her permission. The tiny part of her that was still screaming caution got swallowed up as she cupped his cock, feeling his body jerk towards her in response as she awkwardly began to stroke him through his clothes.

“What are you doing?” he asked in rough voice.

“Touching your hard on,” she whispered back. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No, no, but...” Arthur made a hissing sound against her skin. “I don’t want to push you too fast.”

“You’re not pushing me,” Ariadne stroked him again, “I’m taking the initiative.”

“Here? Are you sure?” Arthur’s hips pressed upwards as he spoke.

“Do want to see how sure I am?” Ariadne rolled her head towards his and kissed him, feeling his mouth answer her demand with one of its own, and that was the spur she needed. If Arthur had said no, or pulled back, she would have stopped. But he was as needy for her and she was for him, hospital be damned. With a sharp move she pulled away, sat up and ripped her shirt over her head, tossing it to the floor. It was followed rapidly by her bra. She laid herself back down against Arthur, the fine knit of his T shirt soft on her back as she ran one hand up her ribs, over her right breast and towards her neck. “You’re driving me crazy,” she murmured. “I want you to touch me.”

“Where?” Arthur said hoarsely.

“All over.” She groped for his hand, and when she met no resistance, took it and laid it over her breast. “Start here,” she insisted.

Arthur’s hand flexed, cupping her breast, and rubbing his thumb down to feel her nipple, hard and peaked in his palm. “Oh god,” he breathed. “I really, I just— Sit up,” he ordered suddenly, wriggling out from behind her and sliding off the bed.

For a moment Ariadne was mortified. “Where are you going?” She heard her voice going tight as Arthur made for the door.

“I don’t want anyone to walk in. I don’t want to have this,” he turned back and looked at her, his face dazed as he started to smile at her, “this incredible moment ruined by Sandrine coming to tuck you in.” He grabbed the door handle. “Shit, no lock.” He glanced around, then alighted on one of the easy chairs. Ariadne watched as he hauled it across the room and with a careful tilt, jammed it underneath the door handle so it couldn’t turn. “Better,” he observed, coming back to the bed.

“Wait,” she said and held out her hand. “Shirt off, please,” she asked with a grin.

“Fair is fair,” Arthur remarked, and stripped it off. His chest was lightly sprinkled with hair, his nipples dark and flat against his pale skin, his shape lean, not over defined, but strong nonetheless.

“Nice.” She restrained herself from licking her lips.

“Thank you,” Arthur said dryly. “Now, where were we?”

“My breasts.” Ariadne shimmied back on the bed and beckoned him towards her, expecting he would climb in next to her. Instead Arthur came towards her with a dirty twinkle in his eye. He stopped at the bedside, leant over, captured her mouth with his and took her breasts in both hands, first stroking, then massaging, teasing and pinching her nipples as she moaned into his mouth.

“They’re amazing.” He grinned as she fell back into her pillows, pushing herself into his hands. Her body was greedy for him now, arcs of sensations shooting through her at each touch. “I want to kiss them. May I kiss your breasts, Ariadne?” he asked in a voice that she felt all the way to her clit.

“Mmm.” She pulled him towards her, but Arthur resisted, climbing slowly onto the bed next to her, lying down so his face was level with her chest.

“May I?” he asked again, looking up at her.

“Yes,” she groaned. “Just— _yes_.”

His mouth met her skin and she arched up at the contact. Arthur scattered kisses across her chest, each one warm and soft on her skin, sending out tiny prickles of arousal as he covered each breast, circling her nipples until finally he opened his mouth around one and began to suck, his tongue laving the peak as she gasped and grabbed his head to hold him there. His hands slid over her stomach, dawdling around her navel, then he dipped his fingers slowly between her thighs, pressing against her as she let them relax apart.

“How do you like to be touched there?” He whispered, looking up at her again as his hand slid up and down. “Will you show me?”

Ariadne swallowed hard, feeling her heart hammering in her chest as she put her hand over his and began to press his fingers from side to side over her clit. “Like that,” she panted as Arthur watched her face, copying her motions as she squeezed her eyes closed at the pulse of pleasure it produced.

He dropped his head down again, and she felt his mouth wrap around her other nipple, suckling. It was almost more than she could bear, the feeling lighting up her nerves and making her feel molten hot under him. She knew she was making noises, gasps, moans and groans as he pressed into her, his erection straining against her calf as she pushed against it, trying to work it through the fog of desire in her head.

“What— Oh god, Arthur.” She twisted against him. “What do you like? Show me, I want to know,” she demanded.

“I’d have to take the rest of my clothes off.” Arthur teased her clit again, and she pressed her hips towards his hands.

“Do it,” Ariadne demanded. “I wanna see you. I wanna touch you.” She pushed at his shoulders, and when he sat up ,she wriggled out of her pants and panties in one desperate move. He pushed and kicked the rest of his clothes off in an undignified struggle, trying to kiss her at the same time. When he finally got free, he shifted up on the bed and lay down next to her so they were face to face, and Ariadne took his hand in hers.

“Show me,” she insisted again.

Arthur put her hand on his neck, just below his ear. “Here,” he murmured, letting her reach over and kiss the spot, eliciting a gratifying hiss as her tongue stroked skin. “Mmm,” he sighed. “That’s good, like that.”

“Where else?” she whispered in his ear.

“Here.” Arthur guided her hand over his shoulder and across his collarbone. Ariadne lowered her head and began to nip the skin, working over it like he had her breasts, her tongue following her teeth. Arthur hummed from deep in his throat, then took her hand and ran it over his nipples.

“I like to have them played with. Your mouth, please.” He bit his lip as she kissed one, then the other, first just with her lips, then teasing each one with her tongue, and finally nipping them with her teeth. “Ah— Ariadne, fuck,” he swore, rolling his head back. “Please, like that.” She nipped again, this time sucking them soothingly afterwards, and Arthur’s body seemed to vibrate under her from the incoherent noises he started to choke out.

“Here,” he gasped, and their hands dipped between their bodies, and Ariadne wrapped her hand around his cock, feeling the smoothness of him as well as the hard, hot shape in her grip.

“Show me,” she asked. "How do you touch yourself?”

Arthur’s hand covered hers, squeezing until she copied his grip. Then he began to work himself up and down, twisting his hand on the down stroke. His eyes were screwed tight shut as she moved his hand away, and started to stroke him herself. She let her thumb swipe over the tip, spreading the slickness she found there in a circle over it, then she wriggled her other hand from underneath her body and slid it between his thighs.

“Here too?” She cupped his balls and started to stroke them with her fingers, and Arthur gasped.

“Oh, yeah,” he managed.

“I’d like to kiss you here,” she said as she squeezed him for emphasis. “May I do that?”

Arthur forced his eyes open. “You kiss me there and I will come,” he said breathlessly.

“Is that a problem?” She tilted her head up to accept a kiss.

“It is when I want to have sex with you,” Arthur growled. “When I want to come while I’m inside you.” He pressed his hand against her again, copying her motions from before and her hands faltered. “Can we do that?” he asked. “I want to taste you, I want to let you put your mouth all over me, I want to do everything, but right now I want to feel you come around me.”

“I have Depo shots,” Ariadne managed. “Are you clean? I am, at my last screen.”

“Last time I checked.” He bent his head down and kissed her again, their hands tangling around each other. Ariadne felt like she was fracturing with desire, golden fragments pouring out at his touch. “Is that OK?” he breathed into her ear. “I can go and find a condom, or we can do this another way, just say.”

“No, god Arthur, I want—” His hands felt as if they were stroking her everywhere at once, her breasts, her pussy, her ass; kneading, rubbing and inflaming her with his greedy fingers.

“Turn over,” he insisted in a raw voice. “On your back.” She peeled herself away from him with a huge effort, and as she moved she felt him settle against her side, one arm sprawled above her head. With infinite care his hand ran down her thigh, and at his encouragement Ariadne moved her knees apart, letting him drape her leg over his hip so her hips rolled towards him.

“Ah,” he murmured as he bent his head down to kiss her. She could feel him guiding himself against her, teasing at the entrance to her pussy as she pushed back towards his body. “You feel so good,” he ground out as he began to move into her inch by inch, the fullness of him making her moan. Arthur’s hand slid over her stomach, trailing down to tease her clit as he kept going, bringing their bodies flush together.

“OK?” He was breathing hard as he held himself still. Ariadne tightened around him, letting her body enjoy the sensation and relishing the hiss of pleasure it created.

“Yeah.” She pulled his head down for a kiss and ground her pelvis back into him, urging him to move. Arthur pulled back slowly, as if he was teasing her again or testing his self control, then slid forwards a little faster. “More,” she insisted, looking up at his desire stained eyes, reaching her hand down to join his at her clit. She felt slick and tight, her body grabbing at his as she pushed back into his thrusts. The feeling was huge, just like it had been in her dream, her skin ablaze with a billion nerves all aching to let go and dive headlong into the sheer pleasure.

“Don’t stop,” she begged. “I dreamed it like this.”

Arthur’s hips pulsed harder. “Did you? Like before, in Limbo?”

“No,” she groaned as his fingers pressed down in time with hers.

“Like a fantasy?”

“Like a wet dream,” she admitted breathlessly and Arthur gasped as she tightened around him again.

“I’ve had those, since we came back. You and me, making love.” He kissed her mouth as she arched up again. “Fucking,” he growled. “Coming over and over until you’re screaming. Me on top of you so I could go as hard as I wanted—”

Ariadne felt her body starting to tense, the tension winding up inside her and making her clit pulse, she was so close it was making her vision blur, and hearing him talk was only making it come faster.

“You on top of me, so I could watch you like this. You’re close, I can feel it, I can feel you, you’re—” Arthur broke off his desperate litany as she felt herself tighten from her toes upwards.

“Coming, I’m coming,” she chanted desperately, all the images in her head and his body hot and rapid against hers, filling her as the sensations inside her tipped over the edge, spasming around him as her back arched off the bed. She could hear herself panting out his name, hands flailing towards him as she came, every muscle and nerve shaking as she let go in a headlong rush.

Arthur’s eyes bored into hers as he kept moving with her, watching her avidly, his lip caught in his teeth as his skin coloured. “Can’t last,” he gasped, his face screwed up. "Too much. _Oh fuck, Ariadne_ , Ariadne, I—” His eyes opened wide, fixing on hers as his hips jerked, his hands tight on her as he moved before he let go with a groan. A weak but satisfied smile spread across his face as he slumped down next to her, stroking her stomach lazily as she relaxed into the aftershocks.

“That was good.” She raised her hand to stroke his face, feeling the post coital glow in every inch of her.

“I aim to please.” Arthur kissed her palm. “And judging by the way you were saying my name, I think I succeeded. Even if it was over far to fast.”

“Would you and your ego like to be alone?” She teased.

“You weren’t the only one who was incoherent with orgasm,” he reminded her as he kissed her mouth softly. “I liked that very much.”

Ariadne reached up and wound her arms around his neck, holding him to her as they kissed again.

“I should go back to my room,” he murmured, but he didn’t move from her embrace.

“No,” she rubbed her nose against his. “Stay here.”

“Sandrine will go crazy if she finds me in your naked in your bed,” Arthur protested weakly.

“Sandrine is going to walk in here tomorrow and wonder what happened to my sheets and why the room smells of sex. I think you being in bed naked will answer all those questions before she even asks them.” Ariadne wound her fingers into his hair, liking the softness of it. “We’re consenting adults, what more can she say?”

“ _Why did you have sex in a hospital bed?_ ” Arthur grinned at her.

“ _It was on my bucket list, Sandrine._ Next question?” she replied cheerfully. “I’d like you to stay, if you want to.”

Arthur’s expression softened. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“So all the stuff about Sandrine was what?” She groped for the sheets and comforter, letting Arthur help pull them over their bodies as they settled.

“My insecurity showing,” he murmured as he stroked her cheek with reverent fingers. “I’m lucky to have you, you know that?” His face was serious as he looked at her.

“Sure you are.” Ariadne covered his hand with her own, the shaky smile on her face covering the surge of happiness that suddenly rose through her. “Aren’t we both?”

Arthur kissed her hard in reply. “Yes,” he said after their lips parted. “I guess we are.”

~*~

If Sandrine had made any comment to Dr. Kohler about the fact Ariadne’s room had been barricaded shut that morning, or that when she’d finally been able to get inside she found Arthur there, the bed in need of fresh sheets or Ariadne smiling like a loon, it didn’t come up. Instead she sat down, her usual pleasant smile on her face and after she enquired how Ariadne was, and announced she had some good news.

“You’ll be being discharged in about twenty-four hours time.”

Ariadne blinked. “That quickly?”

“Well, that makes a nice change from ‘it’s about time.’ Yes, we no longer need to keep you here, and any further treatment you need can be given as an outpatient. Mr. Saito will be covering the costs, if you need any more assistance.”

“Do we need any?” Ariadne responded incredulously.

“It’s possible that in due time you might want to seek further counselling, or more formal psychotherapy. But physically, Joseph tells me you’re all well able to manage, even if you require crutches for a little longer, and from my point of view, I find that you’ve all accepted that you’re awake, you’re oriented to the present, and have no residual effects of the somnacin. Do you feel ready to go into the wider world?”

“I think so,” Ariadne hesitated. “You said we accept that we’re awake, not that we’re in reality. Is that different?”

"Do you think it is? How do you think you can tell if you're in reality?"

Ariadne turned the question over in her mind. "I use my totem. But that really just tells me that I'm not in someone else's dream. If I'm the dreamer, I'm building an environment, then I'm supposed to know that's what I'm doing. I have to rely on my senses to tell me, the fact I can't do impossible things, like bend buildings in half, or make cathedrals out of water or change the colour of my blanket just by wanting it."

"How do you think other people, those who don't work in dreams, tell they're in reality?" Dr. Kohler asked.

"I guess they take it for granted. They know they can't be anywhere but in reality, so they never really question it."

"Do you think there's a process they use? That you used to use, and now you don't rely on as much?"

"I suppose that they examine the world through their senses and hold it up to the things they believe to be true, expecting them to match and confirm that they're in the real world," Ariadne replied slowly. "How is it different for us though?"

Dr. Kohler levelled her eyes at Ariadne. “Physically, you’re awake. That was part of our end goal. As for orienting you to reality, we’ve managed to set up a good basis for you to start from. Reality for most of the population, as you say, is based on perception and expectation. For a person who works in shared dreams, the process is different. You know your senses can be lied to, manipulated and provoked into false impressions. So you use a personal symbol which gives a true or false response, and the most it can tell you is if you are inside someone else’s dream or not. You operate on the understanding that if you are the dreamer you know it, and if you’re not in another’s dream you must be awake, and therefore in reality. You regard the terms as synonyms, but for me one is a matter of knowing, the other is a matter of feeling. You know you’re awake, but you’ve had your feeling of reality shaken. It will take time to return fully.”

“Even if we know we were dreaming?”

“Much as I would like to take the memories of the lives you had from you, that simply isn’t possible. They will stay with you, they will sometimes upset you, or make you long for the things you had. What matters now is that you understand they are memories, however false you come to feel they are, and that you can let them shape you, or let them define you. You expressed deeply held ideas, both of yourselves and others in your dreams. You can learn that despite an overwhelming memory like the ones you have, you may have been wrong about yourself, and others and the world around you.”

Ariadne looked at Dr. Kohler, taking her in for a moment.

“I used to think,” she started slowly, “that wanting and needing were almost the same thing. I gave myself what I wanted, in my dream, but it wasn’t enough. Lance was what I thought I wanted, my job and my kids were perfect for the kind of person I used to think I wanted to be. I used to think I was strong enough to get what I wanted, and that would make me feel complete, and happy. But it isn’t the same, is it?”

“Not generally,” Dr. Kohler answered mildly. “Although if we’re lucky, sometimes the thing we want is the thing we need. What do you think you need now?”

Ariadne sat still, watching the birds wheeling across the sky outside. “I need to build,” she said quietly. “And I need not to sacrifice the things I’ve waited for for so long for the things I could have right now.”

~*~

Ariadne was packing her suitcase when Arthur knocked on her door. She turned around to see him immaculate in a three piece suit, his hair slicked back and his shoes shined. All that made him different from the man she’d met so long ago was the smile on his face as she met his eyes.

“Hey,” she beckoned with a tilt of her head. “Come in. You look sharp.”

Arthur came towards her, putting his hands around her waist and bringing her close to him. “You like it?” He raised his eyebrows cheekily before he swooped in for a kiss.

“It’s a good look,” she admitted. “Are you all packed?”

“Yes, and ready to go.” Arthur kissed her forehead this time.

“When’s the flight?” she asked, smoothing his hair back with her hands, careful not to muss it.

“Two hours time. The car is taking us in about fifteen minutes.” Ariadne pressed her face into his shirt front, tightening her arms around his shoulders.

“What’s your itinerary again?” Her words came out muffled as she inhaled the smell of soap, cologne, coffee and Arthur, a salt warm note that she didn’t want to forget.

“LA, Boston, Chicago, New York,” he pulled her closer. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” he said into her hair.

“I want to, I really do,” she turned her head and rested it on his chest. “But I need to go back and finish my degree. I need to be the best I can possibly be, real world and dreams.”

Arthur’s hands cradled her jaw, making her look up at him. “I understand,” he said gently. “You’re going to be amazing.” His smile was so bright it almost blinded her, and when he kissed her, she felt him drinking her in, taking his time to savour her before he had to go.

A discreet cough made them separate. Eames was in the doorway, case in hand.

“The car’s downstairs,” he said blandly. “Are you ready?”

“One minute,” Arthur said clearly. Then he gathered her up, almost crushing her to him. “I’ll see you sooner than you can think,” he promised in a whisper. “OK?” His lips brushed her ear and she shivered, and just for a second her resolve wavered.

“OK,” she forced herself to say. “Don’t bring me anything. Just you.” Her voice started to crack, and she bit her lip to stop the knot in her throat from choking her.

“Quick,” he breathed, “give me a kiss.” She almost laughed, but his mouth was on hers and it died in her throat. His lips were warm, almost gentle, just like they had been the first time.

As he let go, Ariadne didn’t allow herself to cling to him. She let her arms fall, releasing him as he stepped back. As he left the room, he turned back, just for a moment, and seeing her still watching him, he smiled again. Then he was gone, and the space where he had been was empty.

Ariadne closed her eyes and breathed in, as slowly and calmly as she could against the ache in her throat and the prickle at her eyelids. By the end of tomorrow, she would be back in Paris, and by the end of the week, back in school, finishing her Masters in Architecture and preparing to defend her thesis. Once she had her degree, she would have her whole life before her, free and open as the sky. But that didn’t make it feel any better, no matter how reassuringly real the pain was.

She closed her suitcase, zipping the lid and setting it by the door. Nothing of her left here either. Just a space where she had been. Last of all, Ariadne set her totem on the bedside table and tapped it firmly. It teetered, just for microsecond, then fell with a cold, hard plunk, rolling on its edges until she scooped it up.

 _Time to return to my reality_ , she thought calmly.

She picked up her bag, switched off the lights and closed the door behind her.

~*~


	14. Chapter 14

~*~

The old woman in the dark red headscarf by the steps to the pont de Bir-Hakeim held out a tattered McDonald’s soda cup to passers by, shaking it encouragingly as she held her coat closed against the early autumn chill. Her skin was tanned, heavily lined and shiny, like wood worn down by the sea. She caught Ariadne’s eye as she walked towards the bridge, her bright black eyes pinning onto hers as she smiled and shook her cup.

Ariadne dipped into her pocket, fishing out a couple of cents. "Here," she smiled. But as she made to drop them in the mouth of the cup, the old woman grasped her hand.

“I tell future,” she said in a scratchy voice, turning Ariadne’s hand over as she tried to pull back, clutching her bag tighter to her side.

“No, thank you.” Ariadne tried to withdraw again, nervously polite, but the old woman tightened her grip.

“Free,” she insisted. “You are kind, so free.”

Ariadne sighed. She wasn’t going to get away without hearing it. With one last glance around her for any accomplices the old woman might have, she opened her hand, letting her fingers splay out.

“Ah,” the old woman bent closer, her dirty hair coming in wisps from under her scarf. She stared at Ariadne’s hand intently, turning it from side to side as she frowned.

“You live before,” she said uncertainly. “You old woman, young skin.” Her voice faltered. “You travel very far, over water, with water.” She looked up at Ariadne, her forehead crinkling into new lines. “ _Sleep walker_ ,” she sounded almost scared at the word. “You have pain, destruction and sadness, but also much joy.” Her voice hesitated. “You have waited a long time, but your joy is soon.” She let go of Ariadne’s hand and drew back. “You waited a lifetime,” she said in disbelief, pulling her coat tighter at her throat, as if the air around her was suddenly frigid with cold.

Ariadne stepped away, putting her hand back into her pocket and refusing to be rattled by the vague ramblings of some roadside mystic, but at the same time feeling the words drop deep down inside her, making ripples that spread out to the farthest parts of her self.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly, hurrying away, mounting the steps in a rush and striding out onto the bridge. Paris was soft in the faint autumn light, the colours muted and fading as the leaves of the trees fell in bright confetti of reds, golds and browns; the light bouncing off the windows and the water hazy rather than blinding, cloaking the city in a gauzy magic that made even the overflowing trash cans by the Seine and the scratched graffiti on the bridge supports bright and somehow playful, rather than tattered and dirty.

She walked across the Seine, one person in a crowd of hundreds, listening to the sounds of the Metro over head, the cars and the people on the bridge. How had she ever believed her Paris could be so alive, so complex and difficult as this? She wondered every day since she had been back. How had she ever missed the random shape and colour of reality, that only seeing it again made her realise how much her world had lacked it? Every face was still a surprise, a life briefly intersecting with hers before it flew out of sight. Every expression, every turn of the head, every shade of shadow falling on a wall or creak of a window opening; she drank them all in, and gloried in them all over again. Since coming back her other daily ritual, aside from crossing the bridge, had become watching the daily news, scanning the newspapers for signs of Robert and Saito. After weeks of rehashing the same storylines her patience had eventually been rewarded, when Robert finally made his statement to the media. Flanked by a stony faced Robert Browning, he had looked paler, less suntouched than before, with dark circles under his eyes. But when he spoke his voice was strong and unwavering. "It is with great excitement that today I announce a new era in the life of Fischer-Morrow," Robert looked around as camera flashes went off around him. "After consulting with my advisors, I have decided that the time has come to allow others to have a stake in the interests we hold around the world. To diversifiy our outlook, assisting in infrastructure for states who currently have poor or weak grid systems to supply their people's energy needs. To further research into reknewable resources, using the great team of scientists and engineers we currently have in our company. My good friend, Mr. Kintaro Saito of Proclus Global, has been of great help in reaching these decisions with me, and as such my hope is that we will continue in our spirit of cooperation for many years to come." As he stepped back the pack of journalists all called at once

  
_"Mr. Fischer, is there any truth in the rumour you're selling large portions of your share in the Northern Gas Pipeline?" "Mr. Fischer, any comment on the arrest of the head of Cobol Engineering?" "Mr. Browning, do you have any comments to make?"_

_Saito had his wish then,_ she thought. Robert was breaking up his company, and he was reaping the spoils. In that light the eyewatering sum she had distributed in three accounts for safe keeping suddenly seemed a small price for what he was getting in return. It's finally over, she told herself as she gazed idly at the TV. She'd been repeating that sentence over and over since she'd climed on the plane home, holding her totem tightly and sending tiny looks to her watch every few minutes. Everytime she saw Miles watching her, she smile and think it again. Everytime she thought she saw Carl or Aisling in the park, she'd jam into into her head and turn away. There was only one set of thoughts it didn't work on, but when they came she gripped them tight in her head, holding on to every aching detail, because it meant she got to remember someone she had sworn never to forget.

She was near the centre of the bridge, looking across to the water, when a familiar line caught her eye. For a moment she thought that her memories were trying to surface again, a trick of the light that she was letting herself see out of sheer want. But no.

A man, in profile, looking over the water, his elbows resting on the guardrail as he looked towards the left bank. Dark coat, dark gloves; her heartbeat began to speed up as she moved towards him, her feet clumsy as she tried to hurry.

He turned towards her, as if he’d heard her racing towards him, and as he caught sight of her his smile blossomed across his face, a hint of a dimple in each cheek.

“Arthur?” she breathed as she rushed into his arms. He grasped her shoulders, and she just didn’t care that a wide and foolish smile spread across her face.

“Hello, Ariadne,” he said quietly, standing there in his overcoat, neat hair and pressed suit, large as life. “It’s been a while.”

She didn’t answer. Instead she launched herself forwards, kissing him as hard as she could, heedless of the people around them tutting as they had to step around them as Arthur wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back.

“Hey,” she breathed when they parted lips for air. “You were supposed to call me.”

“I flew in overnight. I didn’t want to wake you up.” His hands worked themselves into her hair.

“I missed you,” she admitted, shy all of a sudden.

“In three weeks, you missed me?” he said with slow disbelief.

“Yes.” She took his face between her hands, making him look her in the eyes. His smile faded as he looked at her, the crinkles under his eyes smoothing and his dimples vanishing.

“Oh, Ariadne,” he murmured. His voice made her shiver. “I missed you too.” He kissed her again, softly this time, soothing even as it set her toes curling in her boots.

“So,” she asked with a gentle smile as they pulled apart again. “Is there a job?”

“There could be.” Arthur’s thumbs traced her cheekbones. “For a fully qualified Master of Architecture.”

“Do you know one?”

“Almost.” Arthur’s charming smile came back. “But I’m not here for work. I’m here for you.”

Ariadne shook her head slowly, her face aching from the grin she was wearing. “Well, in that case, you’d better come home with me. How long are you planning on staying? Just so I know how many extra loaves of bread, pints of milk, and apples, to buy at the supermarket, you understand.”

“Of course,” Arthur replied gravely. “How does the foreseeable future sound?”

“It sounds perfectly reasonable,” she murmured, right before she pulled him back into her embrace.

_You can’t see the future_ , she thought as she took Arthur’s hand and led him back the way she’d come. No one could predict or try to make it perfect. The best anyone could hope for was someone who to travel with,even for a little while; to grow with and feel safe with when the world shook on its foundations. She looked at Arthur, seeing him offer her his slight, warm smile, and inside her the slow feeling began to bloom: This journey was going to be amazing.

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N's:  
> For this fic in its entirety, there is one thank you above all others: who has beta'd, babysat, and listened to me when everything turned to shit (as it did, at various points.) There would be no fic if it wasn't for you, cariad. I owe you more than this stupidly inadequate thank you, but I hope you will accept it any way. All my love, dear one. If there is any good here, it belongs to you.
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> Naming notes: **Aisling** (Ash-ling )= Gaelic, _dream_ ; **Carl** = after the father of dream interpretation, Carl Jung; **Lance** = short for Lancelot, the rival for Guinevere in various Arthurian stories; **Moses** = Middle English corruption of the name _**Moss**_.  
>  **Beatrix** = Latin, _bringer of joy;_ **Radheyah** = Arabic, _content or satisfied;_ **Amari** (Yusuf's last name) = Arabic, _long lived._
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> Eames' coat of arms isn't one currently used by any family as far as I can tell. It's constituent parts mean as follows: The broken lance- peace. A white rose- love and faith; charm and innocence. Leopards- valiant and hardy individual who enterprises hazardous undertakings with courage; Ray or Rayonnee in the background- Glory and splendor; fountain of life; intelligence and enlightenment
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> The toast Eames gives is from _The Sandman_ , vol. 4: _Season of Mists_ and the song he sings later on is _[The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_I_Love_is_Up_in_the_Gallery)_
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> _"Tyrian purple..."_ is from Pliny The Elder's _Natural History._
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> _Kafka On The Shore_ is by Haruki Murakami, and The _Discworld_ novels by Terry Pratchett. Both are excellent in their own unique ways.
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> The quoted itteration of _Hannibal_ is the property of Brian Fuller/NBC. I'm also not the owner of any of the newspapers listed; I do believe that they mostly belong to Uncle Rupert (except for _The Guardian_ :) ) 


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